Poet, writer and musician Joy Harjo — a member of the Muskogee Creek Nation — often draws on Native American stories, languages and myths. But she says that she's not self-consciously trying to bring that material into her work. If anything, it's the other way around.

For Douglas Clark, the darkest part of working for Nike in the 1980s was watching American shoe manufacturing "evaporate" in the Northeast in a mass exodus to Asia in pursuit of cheaper labor.

"As a true Yankee — and my father was a Colonial historian — you know, it was heartbreaking," he said.

Clark would go on to a long career in footwear, at Converse, Reebok, Timberland, then his own line of shoes at New England Footwear. And there, he would devote eight years to one mission: creating a model to make shoemaking in America profitable again.

A record 70.8 million people were forcibly displaced by war, persecution and other violence worldwide at the end of 2018, according to the latest annual Global Trends report by the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

A polar bear described as "starving and exhausted" and looking for food has strayed into a city in Russia's northern Siberia, hundreds of miles from the animal's natural Arctic range.

According to Reuters, the female bear who wandered into Norilsk, a major industrial town, was "visibly weak and seemly ill" and "lay despondently on the ground for hours ... its feet caked in mud."

Ronald Reagan's former budget director, David Stockman, calls Art Laffer "the greatest Fake Economist to ever come down the pike."

Laffer helped popularize the notion that tax cuts pay for themselves through faster economic growth.

It almost never works out in practice. But Laffer and his namesake curve remain darlings of Republican politicians.

Two members of Hong Kong's Executive Council have followed the territory's chief executive in issuing a public apology for supporting an extradition bill that continues to fuel massive demonstrations despite its suspension.

The remarks come as officials brace for the possibility of further protests in the Asian financial hub, where anger over the bill — which would allow Hong Kong people accused of certain crimes to be tried in mainland China courts — has already sparked clashes between protesters and police.