Hispanic Americans are curious about QAnon too

IF YOU VISIT Segadores de Vida, a Hispanic megachurch in the outskirts of Miami, you will probably get more than your average church service. Its Dominican-born pastor, Ruddy Gracia, has been teaching conspiracy theories alongside the Bible. Pastors who have not resisted lockdown orders are “in line to get the mark of the beast”, he told his parishioners....

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The Biden administration wants to change guidelines on campus sexual assault

A FEW WEEKS after he had a one-night stand with a fellow student, Daniel (not his real name) received a text message from a mutual acquaintance. It said the woman had been drunk and had not wanted to have sex with him. It wished him luck finding a new university. “Unfortunately that was about right,” says Daniel, who claims his protests that the encounter...

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Portland was once a byword for tattooed vegan microbrewers

PLYWOOD WINDOWS can be only so inviting. On what seems to be every block, they still decorate downtown Portland a year after racial-justice protests began peacefully, turned violent, and were met with tear-gas and federal shock troops. They have not been removed because of sporadic bouts of anarchy euphemistically called “direct action”. A recent May...

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American schools teach reading all wrong

PHONICS, WHICH involves sounding-out words syllable by syllable, is the best way to teach children to read. But in many classrooms, ff-on-ics is a dirty sound. Kymyona Burk, who implemented Mississippi’s statewide literacy programme, says that some teachers have had to sneak phonics teaching materials into the classroom, like some kind of samizdat....

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Kyrsten Sinema’s technicolour moderation

WHEN KYRSTEN SINEMA first sashayed into the Senate, liberal hearts fluttered. The 42-year-old was one of the youngest women elected to the chamber, the first Democratic senator from Arizona for three decades, and exuded cosmopolitan élan. By repute a “Prada socialist” with a charismatic personality, she was also the first openly bisexual member of Congress....

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Deportations of undocumented immigrants are at a record low

ALTHOUGH DONALD TRUMP talked the fiercest nativist game about illegal immigration, it was Barack Obama who oversaw the removal of more undocumented immigrants from America during his presidency, earning him the nickname “deporter-in-chief”. During his first term, Mr Obama deported over 60% more people than Mr Trump (see chart). Now Joe Biden is breaking...

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Horseracing, the sport of kings, needs more punters and fewer drugs

“IT’S A WIN-WIN,” says Zach Noren, who is visiting Belmont Park, a racetrack on the border of Long Island and New York City, with his three-year-old son Jack. “He likes the horses and I like to bet.” Mr Noren normally pays attention to the “ponies” only for Triple Crown events, like the Kentucky Derby. This is not unusual. There were few punters at...

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Hispanic Americans are most vulnerable to covid-19

According to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, racial minorities were three times as likely to be hospitalised with covid-19 as whites in 2020. Why? Data scientists at a3.ai, a health-research group, analysed the insurance records of 14m patients in the Covid-19 Research Database, 380,000 of whom were diagnosed...

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Who owns the national pastime?

NOTHING SAYS spring like the thwack of cowhide on maple. It follows that nothing says mass vaccination like the sound echoing through a crowded ballpark. Lexington and 3,000 other Marylanders experienced this thrill one sunny evening last week in Frederick, Maryland, home of the redoubtable Frederick Keys. It was in effect the team’s first home game,...

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The pandemic pushed more Americans to try out van life

IN 2019 LUCY JACOBSON and her colleagues at Rossmönster Vans flew to San Francisco carrying “suitcases full of cash”. They were on their way to purchase five retro Volkswagen vans made in the 1980s in order to drive them back to Longmont, Colorado and turn them into custom adventure-mobiles. The road trip home took them to Las Vegas (“to let our freak...

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