Three years after the most radical overhaul of the nation’s welfare system ever, the number of people on welfare has been cut in half. But it has not changed other factors that effectively keep people in poverty. More →

August 6, 1999

In Baltimore, Maryland, Tamir Goodman is both an Orthodox Jew and a star basketball player. At 17, in his junior year in high school this past season, he averaged 35 points a game and was offered an athletic scholarship next year by the basketball powerhouse University of Maryland. More →

July 30, 1999

Alongside Christians and Jews in all their variety, there are now Muslims and Buddhists and Sikhs and Hindus, a million Hindus in all, struggling, as have all other newcomers, to establish their faith and traditions in the United States. More →

July 30, 1999

In Washington and in cities across the U.S., followers of the Falun Gong meditation movement are turning out to express solidarity with besieged practitioners in China. Thousands have been detained since China’s Communist government began last week’s crackdown. This week, Falun Gong literature was confiscated and very publicly destroyed. More →

July 30, 1999

  BOB ABERNETHY: In the aftermath of the Columbine High shootings, the entertainment industry has been wrestling with whether the violence it presents on the screen encourages violence in real life, and if so, what to do about it. We … More →

July 9, 1999

As death approaches, hospice care can impose a heavy burden, with great responsibilities on families. Palliative care is a method of treatment for terminally ill patients and their families that provides them with hospice-like care in a hospital. More →

July 9, 1999

Part two of our series on the Tibetan Buddhists in exile in India. They’re refugees not only from Chinese oppression in Tibet but also from what the Dalai Lama calls “cultural genocide.” More →

June 11, 1999

Our special report on the life, the plight, and the humor of the Dalai Lama. Forced out of Tibet by the Chinese in 1959, living in exile with little apparent chance of returning, the Dalai Lama remains one of the world’s foremost symbols of hope and nonviolence. How does he keep from hating those who are destroying his country? More →

June 4, 1999

Ten years after the Tiananmen Square massacre, U.S.-Sino relations are again at a low point, sparked by the mistaken bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and charges that China stole nuclear secrets. Some activists are concerned the tense political situation will pose increased difficulties for advocacy and human rights, such as religious freedom. More →

June 4, 1999

BOB ABERNETHY: Last week, we reported on the revival of cultural interest in Joan of Arc, the 15th-century French peasant girl who became a French national hero and a Roman Catholic saint. One piece of the new interest is a … More →

May 14, 1999