Newsletter Archive

Africans are among the fastest-growing immigrant groups in the United States, though those from sub-Saharan countries also tend to be among the poorest newcomers and least likely to find good-paying jobs. “African communities still face an uphill battle to obtain work authorization … to be lifted out of poverty,” says an official at Black Alliance for Just Immigration. With other groups, the alliance is organizing naturalized citizens to vote – so they can help shape U.S. policy on issues such as immigration reform, employment and the public safety net.

Congress as an institution gets low marks: Barely one in five Americans think it’s doing a decent job, according to a recent Gallup poll. Yet voters keep re-electing most of the same people to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. Just 25 out of 435 House seats are truly being contested, while only seven of 34 Senate races fit that category, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report says.

In civics classrooms across the country, the U.S. presidential race is yielding disparate lessons. Some teachers have complained of a campaign “eliciting fear and anxiety among children of color, immigrants and Muslims” and giving license to rough language and behavior, as one report said. But educators also have found fertile new ground for  studying eligibility requirements or a major political party’s historic choice of a female nominee. The goal, says one educator, is to “teach the civics, not the circus.”

As they flee Mosul for the relative safety of refugee camps, Iraqis are sharing tales of trickery and oppression by occupying Islamic State militants. The extremists “hang white flags on their cars so they can get closer to the Iraqi Army before they blow themselves up,” a teenage girl says. Many IS militants have shaved their signature beards and wear black to masquerade as Iraqi special forces. They’d long fixated on appearances, requiring even girls as young as 7 to wear headscarves for modesty.

More bad news for embattled South Korean President Park Geun-hye, fighting off calls for her resignation over an alleged corruption scandal. There’s a new delay in recovery of the Sewol, the South Korean ferry that capsized in April 2014 and claimed the lives of 304 people, mostly high school students. The country’s worst maritime disaster revealed regulatory failures and gaps in the government’s emergency-response protocol. Bringing the vessel back to the surface could provide more insights – and perhaps appease victims’ angry relatives. But salvage operators now say it won’t happen this year. For now, the Sewol is stuck in muck.