BEIJING / AP China is not building an environmental monitoring station on a disputed South China Sea shoal, the foreign ministry said Wednesday, apparently denying remarks made by a local official last week that prompted a request for clarification from rival claimant the Philippines. Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said reports about the facility on Scarborough Shoal had been checked …

  WASHINGTON / AP Afghanistan wants the United States to send more forces to help meet shortfalls in the battle against the Taliban and the IS group, the nation’s top diplomat said. Foreign Minister Salahuddin Rabbani welcomed a recent call by US Gen. John Nicholson, the top American commander in Afghanistan, for a few thousand more troops from the US …

  Mend it, don’t end it’ was Bill Clinton’s rhetorical straddle regarding affirmative action. Republican efforts to ‘repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act (ACA) (Obamacare) look increasingly like ‘mend it, don’t end it.’ The problem is not that, as is frequently said, no entitlement can be ended. The most consequential legislation of the 1990s, the 1996 welfare reform, repealed …