• “Reverse discrimination” claims: U.S. Supreme Court justices on Wednesday appeared to lean toward making it easier for people from “majority backgrounds” to pursue workplace discrimination claims.
• White House press pool: The White House said Tuesday that its officials “will determine” which news outlets can regularly cover President Donald Trump up close. The announcement marks a sharp break from a century of tradition.
  • Related Monitor story: CNN out, Breitbart in: Our reporter on what the new Pentagon ‘rotation’ means
• Bosnian Serb president sentenced: A court in Bosnia on Wednesday sentenced the pro-Russia Bosnian Serb president, Milorad Dodik, to one year in prison and banned him from politics for six years over separatist actions as tensions mount.
• Decline in U.S. Christians slows: The number of Americans who identify as Christian has declined steadily for years, but that drop shows signs of slowing, according to a new survey from the Pew Research Center.
  • Related Monitor story: America’s changing pews: Who shows up at church on Sunday?

While much of Europe is wrestling with resurgent far-right politics, Serbia stands apart thanks to a student-led mass movement against corruption and its strongman president. The protests are driven by fresh outrage over corruption after a roof at a railway station collapsed. But they are also fighting against a corrosive and long-standing sense that nothing can change. The student protesters have found support everywhere, with people offering them food and supplies in every town as they recently walked miles in freezing temperatures. “Nothing hurts anymore!” one student exclaimed.

Would being able to say whatever you want, whenever you want, make a difference in where you attended college? In Texas, the University of Austin experiments in its first year with blending radical free speech with higher education. For students and professors looking for an alternative to traditional, liberal-leaning colleges, the school has filled an important gap. But it has also not been without its critics. Here, we offer a first glimpse inside the new university.

Before the Los Angeles fires, the Pasadena Community Job Center was a place for residents looking for a day job or just a helpful voice on work issues. Since then, it has used that love and tenacity to expand its sense of service. Residents are coming here to help each other and the city. A sign posted on a refrigerator reads, “Solidarity not charity.” One volunteer, who drove 2,000 miles to help, says it has changed his view of humanity. He says, “It seems like everybody’s out to get everybody, you know? But in reality, there’s all these people who come to help.”

Yemen’s decadelong civil war has been catastrophic for its people, pushing millions into dire poverty. But it has also come at an environmental cost. In the coastal city of Aden, generations of residents grew up watching the spectacle of the sky above the city filling with birds each winter. War has forced people – and their garbage – deeper into what was once a rich wetland teeming with migratory birds. A lingering affection for the birds remains, and activists are hoping to turn it into an effort to save the reserve.

In our fast-paced culture, boredom is often seen as a problem to be fixed. Our essayist challenges that notion and encourages us to embrace ennui as a time to rest and rekindle the spirit. “Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds,” Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote. “Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.”

In a three-decade-long military standoff with China over one of the world’s critical waterways, the Philippines has now deployed its latest response. Last month, it sent a 40-page comic book to schools, full of colorful stories about the country’s well-recognized claims to its maritime territory in the South China Sea.

The aim of the graphic novelette, said officials, is “to put forward the truth” against China’s disinformation campaign – which includes a narrative of peaceful intent in grabbing islands far from its shores – and to inspire young Filipinos “to protect what is rightfully ours.”

“It is crucial for us to shed light on these actions as transparency is a powerful tool in combating misinformation,” said national security adviser Eduardo Año.

The comic book adds to a very successful campaign by the government in Manila to invite journalists to film Chinese ships that are using rough tactics, such as water cannons and lasers, against Philippine vessels defending shoals clearly within the Southeast Asian nation’s exclusive economic zone.

In 2016, the Philippines won a crucial ruling from an international court that its claims are legal under the Law of the Sea treaty. Its “transparency initiative” since then, which spotlights China’s aggressive actions, has won it global support as well as military assistance from Japan, France, Australia, and the United States.

“People around the world have a much greater understanding of what China is doing,” wrote Takagi Yūsuke, a Japanese professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, on Nippon.com.

The Philippines is guided by a principle of openness and a reliance on the global norm of rule of law at sea as much as by a military readiness against China. “We have strong faith in humanity,” said Commodore Jay Tristan Tarriela.

The approach also rejects “arguments based on fear of ... China, and pressing [instead] for transparency and accountability regarding the harm it has caused,” wrote Philippine academic Robert Joseph P. Medillo in the Singapore e-magazine ThinkChina. Rather than relying on a “prism of fear,” he stated, the Philippines has enlisted universal law and like-minded countries for its cause.

It has also deployed a comic book to shore up support at home.