When Dang Thi Kim Lieng set herself ablaze in a self-immolation to protest the local communist administration in Vietnam on July 30, the country's dismal human rights records once again caught the world's attention. But, unlike other dictatorships before them, the Hanoi rulers' oppression of their citizens is increasingly being viewed as something even more ominous: More and more, the Communist Party is seen as unpatriotic, as selling out the national interest to secure their own grip on power.

The San Francisco-based Chinatown Neighborhood Association (CNA) announced last week that it intends to file a lawsuit to overturn California Assembly Bill 376, a new law banning the possession, sale and distribution of shark fins. CNA President Pius Lee told the Chinese-language newspaper Epoch Times, the association believes the shark fin ban is unconstitutional. 

The hipster is dying. Or rather, the culture of the hipster is dying. As its dogma is being absorbed into the mainstream, what options are left for the originals but to fade and maybe reincarnate as a new subculture. The hipster has never been completely defined. Websites such as UrbanDictionary and the comedy site Cracked state characteristics of today’s hipster: an appreciation for Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer, the tendency to wear thrift-store and vintage threads, having obscure music tastes and being obsessed with being different from the mainstream. Hipsters operate under irony.

One report on an AP survey shows that the poor are not only getting poorer, they are also more numerous than any time in the last half-century. The other report from the Tax Justice Network finds that the super-rich are not only getting richer, they are also squirreling tens of trillions in offshore tax havens, far outside the reaches of the U.S. and other nation’s tax collectors. Wealthy Americans are amply represented among the offshore tax evaders. This money could bankroll business startups, expand businesses, fatten federal and state tax revenues, and create thousands of new jobs.

For a country steeped in Buddhism, Myanmar is accruing terrible karmic debts. Alarming news and images of attacks and killings by the Buddhist majority in Rakhine Province against a Muslim minority there have been slowly trickling out onto the Internet and the wider world. Pictures of charred bodies and crying parents have stirred largely unheeded calls for intervention, mostly from Muslim nations.

The legion of websites, bloggers, talk show jocks, and the occasional GOP official that has teed off on President Obama and at times Michelle Obama with assorted borderline racist digs, taunts, and depictions have been relentless. The offensive remarks quickly evoke a storm of outrage, and the offender gets rebuked. This happens because they are public figures, and their comments are publicly aired. They fly high on the public’s radar scope. 

The African-American community benefited from Tom Burrell’s efforts because it was a voice at a time when their voices were misunderstood and quelled. Before his retirement in 2003, Tom Burrell, is credited with creating the principle of “positive realism” – “a technique depicting African-Americans using consumer products in a manner that is authentic and relevant." Adele Lasseur, Media Director at Burrell Communications,  recently spoke with Highbrow Magazine about the agency and how it targets what she  calls the most powerful and forward-thinking consumer market: African-Americans. 

The world continues to keep a wary eye on Iran’s nuclear program, in nearby Syria the pro-Iranian government of Bashir al-Assad is on the brink of collapse and Tel Aviv accuses Tehran of being behind the fatal suicide bombing of a bus in Bulgaria which carried Israeli tourists. Yet chicken, or lack thereof, makes daily front-page headlines and is the obsessive subject of scores of cartoons that appear in both state-owned and independent media in Iran.

Hansel Tookes, age 30, is an expert at identifying the detritus of injection drug use. As a public health student on hiatus from medical school, he led a group of researchers who walked the streets of Miami for four months, methodically counting discarded syringes in neighborhoods with high rates of drug arrests. As they crisscrossed more than 800 city blocks, the team spotted 328 used syringes, in parks, lots, and along sidewalks.

The summer of 2012 has not been kind to U.S. law enforcement officials. As Occupy Wall Street protests subsided, the momentum shifted away from America’s financial sector and toward the long simmering issue of police-community relations. Spurred on by the Trayvon Martin shooting, many citizens around the nation redirected their protests and rallied against ‘illegal and unwarranted’ stops by the police. The Federal Court in New York City added more public pressure by granting approval of a class-action suit brought against the NYPD for “suspicionless stops and frisks.”