Robin Templeton | The Nation

Four hundred teenagers converged outside the four-star Hilton hotel in San Francisco, California, and then pushed inside the plush lobby with whoops and chants. Many stood behind posterboards cut out to represent jail bars. Youth activists upset business as usual at a string of Hilton hotels in California in a recent campaign to protest Pacific Gas & Electric Co.'s contribution to Proposition 21, renamed "California's War on Youth Initiative" by its opponents. If passed on March 7, Proposition 21 would prescribe yearlong prison sentences for 14-year-old graffiti writers and felony charges for middle school students found guilty of any activity loosely defined as "gang recruitment."

This article focuses on political issues around the world. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu created new uncertainty about his government's adherence to the interim Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement hammered out at Wye River Plantation on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Israeli press reports indicated Netanyahu was buying time to bring rebellious right-wing Cabinet members into line. The campaign by antiabortion groups to prohibit a rare, vaguely defined emergency medical procedure for late-term abortion might seem a sign of antiabortionists' desperation or even retreat from challenging the right to abortion itself. Neither is true. Legislating at the state and federal level against "partial birth" abortion is the cutting-edge strategy in the drive to criminalize all abortion, as several leading antiabortion groups and the Christian Coalition freely acknowledge. The Niger Delta is on fire. The explosion of a gas pipeline in Nigeria's oil-producing region in October killed more than 700 people. It is also fueling the rage of millions in the delta who want an end to the pollution caused by the oil companies and compensation for their oil-rich land.