A group of pro-immigrant rights activists in Arizona aim to develop a smartphone application that would help immigrants notify friends, family and their attorney if they are detained and arrested during a traffic stop.  The app will allow users to notify family, friends, attorneys and even their consulate when they get pulled over by law enforcement or when they are facing an emergency situation that puts their safety or civil rights at risk.

On the 900-mile trek of mostly desert that stretches between Eritrea and Egypt, hunting for humans has become routine. Eritrean refugees who have fled their homeland fall prey to Bedouin or Egyptian traffickers. The refugees are held for ransom. Those with relatives abroad who can pay for their release might survive. Those who do not are often killed. The United Nations confirms that some are harvested for their organs — their livers and kidneys sold on the black market — while others, the young and able, are sold off. 

Liska Koenig is so San Francisco, she's got a tattoo of the Golden Gate Bridge on her left forearm.  She’s also an undocumented immigrant, and notwithstanding a forced trip back to her hometown of Hannover, Germany in 1997, has lived consistently in the Bay Area since 1989. Having exhausted all options for extending her current student visa, Koenig, 46, is now facing the possibility that she will have to leave. And while remaining an undocumented immigrant is a troubling prospect, talk of moving back to her native Germany forces a cringe.

A year on, the Fukushima nuclear disaster has reached far beyond Japan as an encroaching threat to human health everywhere and to the very existence of life on Earth. As the fallout goes global, there’s nowhere to run or hide since even tiny dosages in rainwater and the food chain have a cumulative effect.

The real wedge issue in the election will be Obama himself. This campaign will be more explicitly racialized than the last one. In spite of the economic difficulties that Blacks face – an unemployment rate almost twice the norm - Blacks nevertheless feel better about the economy than Whites. This is simply racial solidarity. There is still a great deal of support for Obama in the African-American community. Even people who are critical, in the end, say he’s doing the best he can.

The Year of the Dragon is an auspicious time for Chinese parents, so much so that officials in Beijing predict a spike in the number of babies born this year. Expectant mothers, however, are rushing to Hong Kong to give birth so their children will have access to the island’s more modern schools and healthcare facilities. But as hospitals in Hong Kong approach capacity, and as disgruntled locals gripe about the influx of mainlanders, many soon-to-be mothers in China are increasingly turning their eyes to the United States.

The United States Labor Department reported that the Black unemployment rate dropped from 15.8 to 13.6 percent in January, the lowest unemployment rate for African- Americans in almost three years. The report sent a hopeful sign that unemployment among Black men declined from 15.7 to 12.7 percent. Similarly, the unemployment rate for Black women dropped from 13.9 to 12.6 percent.

While some say health care reform may not have gone far enough, the “three big things” it delivers are greater protection for consumers against insurance companies through the new health Patient’s Bill of Rights, expansions in health care coverage and control of health care costs.

It’s not uncommon for crossword puzzles in The New York Times to have a theme. On Thursday, February 16, that theme — in a way that turned out to be both ironic and fitting — was ERROR. At issue was a clue that caught many readers and close followers of the immigration debate by surprise. The clue, No. 54 Across, read: “One caught by border patrol.” The answer: ILLEGAL.

As political maneuvering continues over the fate of the controversial proposed Keystone XL pipeline, one of the world's largest energy companies -- BP -- is already signaling the direction it plans to take: it's positioning itself to tap the burgeoning supply of Canadian tar sands oil. BP announced it will divest from its oil refineries on the Southern West Coast -- in Carson, Calif. -- and Texas City, Tex., and expand its operations in the Pacific Northwest and the Midwest.