To the Point

President Obama has promised to "degrade and eventually destroy" the Islamic State — without sending combat troops back to Iraq.  Will training Iraqi soldiers be enough?  Is there the political will to do anything more?

For the second time, Democrat Hillary Clinton is making her case to be America's first woman president. We hear how she — and Republican Jeb Bush — deal with years of familiarity. 

The Pentagon has long prohibited discrimination based on race, religion, color, sex or age. This week, the same protections have been extended to gays and lesbians — but transgender people are subject to discharge. We hear what it's like to serve when your identity is in question.

The collapse of the for-profit Corinthian Colleges may cost American taxpayers $3.6 billion — even as declining taxpayer support has driven tuition sky high at public universities. Student debt is more than a trillion dollars, and it's already an issue in next year's presidential campaigns.

Critics say the H-1B Visa program is almost an incentive for American companies to replace their employees with lower-paid foreign workers. We hear how some Americans have been laid off and then required to train their own replacements from other countries.

Sunday's parliamentary elections mean big change in Turkey — good news for Kurds, secularists and other minorities; bad news for President Erdoğan, his drive for personal power and his Islamist political party.  It also means new instability in a region awash in deadly violence.

Millions of US government personnel records were not as well protected as most Americans' online bank accounts. That's just one embarrassing lesson from a massive hacking attack that probably came from China. What was it for? Is cyber security being improved?

"Fracking" is used to extract underground oil and gas.  The more it's used, the more controversial it becomes. A new EPA report is being cheered by both environmentalists and the energy industry — but the battle is far from over.

The FBI says police kill about 500 people a year in the United States. Two newspapers report it's at least twice that many. The truth is that nobody knows. Do we need new rules to establish accountability?

Global warming, drought and increased population are combining to increase the pressure on water supplies worldwide.  Is desalination the solution…a stop gap…or technological overkill that's not worth what it costs?