Free Republic

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- Independent bookstores have faced tough times for quite a while. In San Francisco, neighborhood businesses have been passionately protected, so it's hard to believe that an initiative passed by voters to raise the minimum wage is driving a Mission District bookstore out of business. San Francisco's minimum wage is currently $11.05 an hour. By July of 2018, the minimum wage in San Francisco will be $15 an hour. That increase is forcing Borderlands Bookstore to write its last chapter now. When actor Scott Cox took a job at Borderlands Books he didn't do it for the...

DALLAS (Reuters) - In the gritty documentary, a medical technician delivers Mexican babies on the U.S. side of the border, joking that they have "won the lottery" because they get automatic American citizenship as a result. A funeral director devotes much of his time to retrieving and cremating the bodies of Mexicans who die in the desert while trying to make the illegal crossing into America. On the Mexican side, a young man looks into the camera and says he has little choice but to make the attempt to cross if he wants a better life and higher wages. All...

NOGALES, Sonora — Along Boulevard El Greco, construction crews and bulldozers cross the busy street while just beyond the dust clouds, a pair of large retail centers are quickly taking shape. The new 250,000-square-foot Nogales Mall and the 130,000-square-foot Wal-Mart Supercenter are under construction at the city's southern edge. At the same site, a new Peter Piper Pizza and a Carl's Jr. are getting ready to open their doors, alongside a new Applebee's Neighborhood Grill & Bar. Touted as the largest mall to be built in Sonora, with the city's first pair of escalators, the Nogales Mall will have 114...