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Five souls go missing in the deep Atlantic, and the world rallies, confirming our view that the value of life is beyond limits ("The pilot and 4 passengers of the Titan submersible are dead, US Coast Guard says," StarTribune.com, June 22). Technology, aircraft and shipping resources were put to use in a concentrated effort to find and rescue these explorers. Media coverage has been constant and intensive throughout the effort. That's inspiring.

Meantime, hundreds of people are at similar risk on the Mediterranean, fleeing oppression and danger in flimsy, overcrowded boats ("Greece defends response in wreck killing hundreds," June 17). Many die without aid, and the losses continue, largely ignored by the same interests that came together so valiantly to address the Titanic event. Children starve in great numbers across Africa and the Middle East, with little public or media response.

Apparently what we really value is drama and excitement, not human life. Put yourself at risk in an expensive, dangerous and completely unnecessary adventure, and society will spare no expense to correct your mistake. They will pray earnestly for your survival. Suffer due to being born in the wrong place, and you are on your own. Good luck.

Tom Dewey, Green Bay, Wis.

With respect to cellphones in school ("I'm leaving Mpls. schools over cellphone chaos," Opinion Exchange, June 21): Having read the commentary about a teacher leaving Minneapolis schools because of cellphone use, I carefully tore the article out and left it with the Taylor Swift section for my teenage daughter to read. That evening I asked her about it. She thought for a second and then became visibly emotional and frustrated. She said, Dad, you show me these things, school repeatedly educates us about the health, emotional and societal risks of these devices, "but no one does anything about it!" She's right, of course. We as grown-ups are not creating the environment our kids need to settle in, pay attention to their teachers and be free of social media, if only for the hours of the school day.

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Great commentary by Laura Kimball ("I'm leaving Mpls. schools over cellphone chaos").

My daughter is grown and out of school. Thank goodness when she was in school, commonsense rules were in place. The Minneapolis School District knows the surgeon general's warning about too much social media. Hopefully, it's read or heard about the article in the Atlantic. And now it's heard from and lost a valuable teacher. Will the district change this foolish decision? Probably not. They wouldn't want to alienate or upset a parent/child in favor of a more secure, supportive learning environment.

Let's just throw some additional money at the low test score problem and create a new committee to discuss the problem. It could meet over Zoom.

Joyce Suek, Minneapolis

Seems like every decision coming out of Minneapolis City Hall is anti-family. Every bike lane that removes on-street parking is taking away parking that families depend on (over 80% of Minneapolis households own a car). The elimination of single-family housing is only removing the most affordable single-family houses in neighborhoods for expensive triplexes. The City Council, public school district and the Park and Recreation Board should create a commission with the objective of figuring out how Minneapolis can reverse this trend of families moving out.

Pat Smith, Minneapolis

Regarding "Accused killer rethinks guilty plea" (June 21): This is going to sound boring, but bear with me, it's important. I am a retired speech-language pathologist who spent the last nine years of my career working in a high school with many students who had language learning disabilities. Students with language disabilities (including poor vocabulary development, difficulty understanding long and complex sentences and difficulty making sense of the dense language contained in texts) had no trouble communicating with teachers or peers as long as the subjects were relatively simple. They could tell you what they did the night before, what they ate for dinner, etc. But they could not retell the plot of a movie with any accuracy. Research revealed that, while students often could not understand a complex exchange, they seldom admitted this because they did not want to appear "stupid." So, this brings me to the conversation about vocabulary. The three levels of vocabulary: Tier 1 contains words that build sentences like "the," "go," "white," "left," "book," "girl," "sad," etc. Tier 2 contains words that students need to know in order to understand the language of the classroom, such as "impeding," "categorically," "masterpiece," "fortunate," "industrious," "measure" and "benevolent." Tier 3 consists of low-frequency words that occur in specific domains such as high school coursework: "economics," "isotope," "asphalt," "revolutionary," and "crepe."

The judge's question of the man who wished to retract his guilty plea was, "And there's nothing impeding your mental state; is that correct?" I can't know this for certain, of course, but I question whether the defendant would be able to rephrase this question. In my opinion, people who must communicate with others who may or may not be able to understand complex statements need to state things more simply; for example, "Have you taken anything that might leave you confused?" This might seem picky, but I personally have seen high school students in trouble with the law who I knew were not able to understand the proceedings in court, even though they would not admit it nor know how to ask for clarification. At least two of my students received significant sentences.

Carol Henderson, Minneapolis

Hunter Biden is a rich, well-connected white man who has never been president of the United States, was accused of crimes not related to national security, and took responsibility for them in exchange for a lesser sentence after cooperating with a long investigation.

Donald Trump is a rich(?), well-connected white guy who unfortunately was president of the United States, has been indicted on crimes related to national security (and a porn star, but I digress), denied any responsibility for them, attempted to obstruct the long investigation into them, got charged with more crimes as an end result and didn't accept responsibility for that obstruction either.

Given that their crimes, alleged or admitted, have nothing in common with each other, what is the evidence of a two-tiered justice system, you ask? Not the fact that one is a Republican and the other the son of a prominent Democrat.

It's that they're both rich white guys who have access to excellent, expensive attorneys who are able to do nothing for a living besides fight for their one rich white client's best interest.

Countless poor people, many of whom are certainly not white, are currently or have been in jail because they couldn't afford that luxury of highest-quality representation, and that tiered nature of our justice system is indeed a travesty and a national disgrace.