Archive for August 2025

Throughout the 1970s, an arson wave swept the Bronx and other disinvested areas nationwide. Some 20 percent of homes in the borough were burned or abandoned. Families were displaced en masse. While the inferno is often conflated with the previous decade’s racial uprisings and blamed on the buildings’ black and brown tenants, in reality, it was frequently the work of the buildings’ owners. They were incentivized by a novel state-sponsored insurance program, whose lax oversight allowed them to liquidate their properties for inflated payouts, as historian Bench Ansfield recounts in an outstanding new book, Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City.

Above: Detail from a statue of the MP Barbara Castle holding the 1970https://ifp.nyu.edu/wp-admin/post-new.php Equal Pay Act, which she introduced.

Reports of possible abuse, neglect or mistreatment of children in Co Donegal faced delays being assessed by social workers because of “intractable” staffing problems and “burnout” in Tusla, the child and family agency, an internal review found.

The woman, who worked in a home helping integrate vulnerable young people into society, was killed overnight from Saturday to Sunday at her workplace…. Lawyers representing the family identified the victim as 34-year-old Tamima Nibras Juhar, born in Ethiopia.

Starbucks union members and their supporters, including baristas who have just walked off the job, effectively closing a local branch, picket in front of the store on February 28, 2025, in New York City. Starbucks’s CEO made 6,666 times the median Starbucks worker in 2024. He’s not alone.