Lagrange

For homeless girls in Queens, Girl Scout Troop 6000 offers an anchor

When New York City Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer attended the first meeting of Girl Scout Troop 6000 in his district in western Queens this year, he hadn’t the slightest inkling that the small group of girls gathering here would have such an impact. As the first Girl Scout troop in New York designed specifically for homeless girls, Troop 6000 began in February as a modest effort to help bring a sense of community, if not normalcy, to the 100 families with children who lived in a Queens shelter in his district. Only eight girls attended that first meeting in the old breakfast nook of the converted budget hotel in Long Island City. Yet the idea to bring a Girl Scout troop to a family shelter became a symbol for the city’s larger efforts to rethink its efforts to help the homeless, including those to maintain “community anchors” for families that had lost their homes, such as churches and schools.

She arrived in Senegal 43 years ago – and is still there working on social issues

Two dozen men and women sit in a circle at a training center an hour’s drive from Dakar, the capital of Senegal. Molly Melching, a warm American in her 60s who is Tostan’s founder and chief executive officer, listens attentively as participants share what they’ve learned. With support from the Atlanta-based Carter Center, these individuals are learning about human rights at Tostan.

Presidential persuasion: So far, the art eludes Trump

Until this week Mr. Trump has been largely uninvolved in twisting arms and bending ears in an effort to win passage of the bill. In recent days Trump has thrown himself into lobbying for a health-care “win,” but his message has at times contradicted itself, while the bill teeters on the edge of extinction. The irony is that the image Trump has long sold – the dealmaker, the negotiator, and the guy who gets everybody in the room to “yes” – might be somebody America could really use at the moment.

How Western spyware is being used to shut down Arab rights activists

For veteran observers in the Middle East, the revelation that the UAE may have hacked Qatar’s news agency, precipitating a diplomatic crisis, reads like the rejected plot for a spy novel. Since the so-called Arab Spring erupted seven years ago, Arab governments and intelligence agencies have spent millions on spyware, malware, and hacking services, experts and analysts say, waging a digital battle against their own citizens.