Society

After a slight delay, Australia and Papua New Guinea formally signed a defense treaty this week committing the two nations to come to each other's aid if one is faced with an attack.... Read more

At the start of September 2025, US president Donald Trump sent a naval task force into the Caribbean to tackle drug trafficking in the region. The initiative has led to strikes on four alleged drug boats off the Venezuelan coast so far, killing at least 21 people.... Read more

As a researcher of police occupational culture, I was horrified, but not at all surprised by the recent Panorama program in which an undercover reporter exposed sexism, racism and general thuggishness among some Metropolitan Police officers.... Read more

New research by Dr. Laure Humbert from The University of Manchester and Dr. Raphaële Balu from Sorbonne University has revealed how Britain's vital contribution to the French Resistance during the Second World War was largely forgotten in France—and why this silence lasted for decades.... Read more

New research from the University of Kansas asks if mental health issues like depression and anxiety are associated with specific charges faced by juveniles incarcerated in the United States.... Read more

National security officials are "overwhelmingly overconfident," which hinders their ability to accurately assess uncertainty, according to new research by a Dartmouth government professor. When they thought statements had a 90% chance of being true, the statements were only true about 60% of the time, according to the study.... Read more

As Moscow's military offensive grinds on at Europe's eastern edge, tensions are skyrocketing on the continent due to repeated, brazen violations of European airspace deliberately orchestrated by Russia. Europe has announced counter-measures, in the form of a "drone wall" to combat this new threat.... Read more

When asked how she was doing during her second pregnancy, Neethu, 24, told us she felt worried and cautious.... Read more

Bipartisan agreement is rare in these politically polarized days.... Read more

A new study examines how social and geographic factors shaped community perceptions toward the police amid a backdrop of public health crisis and social unrest. The study is published in PLOS One, and was led by Center for Innovation in Mental Health (CIMH) researchers Professor Victoria Khanh Ngo and Dr.... Read more

For most of the past 25 years, Chinese construction companies operating in Africa could count on generous financial backing from Chinese banks. Between 2000 and 2019, Chinese funders committed almost US$50 billion to African transport projects. Most came from Chinese development finance institutions.... Read more

The United States government recently announced a US$100,000 H-1B visa fee on new applications, which will affect highly educated workers from abroad who are seeking jobs in the U.S. This policy could have ripple effects for Canada by reducing the emigration of Canadians going to work in the U.S.—and by... Read more

Luis, originally from Querétaro, Mexico, had been living in Texas for nearly a decade when he was detained and deported. He'd accidentally run a red light while on his way to buy diapers for his newborn.... Read more

Archaeologists have excavated three c. 3,000–2,400-year-old ritual structures in Shandong Province, China, indicating that the origins of a shared Chinese cultural identity lie in ceremonial gatherings that sowed the seeds for the political unification of China under the First Emperor. The findings are reported in Antiquity.... Read more

Nobody wants to admit that a lowly bumper sticker can influence their behavior. But researchers at the University of Cincinnati found that drivers were far more likely to honk after being cut off by a vehicle bearing a political bumper sticker, particularly one for the opposing political party.... Read more

There is a widely held misconception that young people are politically disengaged. This is based on narrow measures like voter turnout. But this overlooks the fact that many young people are deeply curious, especially when politics is understood more broadly: as a way to make sense of society, power and... Read more

From Gaza to Myanmar and Sudan, communities around the globe continue to suffer the consequences of war, civil strife and sectarian violence. Indeed, in 2024, 111 countries experienced some form of mass atrocity against civilians.... Read more

How much people trust politicians affects their support for climate policies. The less trust we have in politicians, the less likely we are to accept climate policies that mean paying a price as individuals. And people are especially resistant towards taxes. These are the results of a new survey of... Read more

In highly polarized situations, open communication is the only way to get through to people, including those who believe in conspiracy theories, revealed a new study in the British Journal of Political Science.... Read more

Previous research has shown that higher education dampens support for capital punishment, but University of Nebraska scholars have discovered those collegiate effects are lessened among conservatives.... Read more

Under President Donald Trump, the United States is expanding its efforts to detain and deport non-citizens at an alarming rate. In recent months, the Trump administration made deals with a number of third states to receive deported non-citizens.... Read more

A review in the International Journal of Smart Technology and Learning discusses the research literature on social media surveillance. It highlights how the practice has become a central feature of the digital era and raises pressing ethical, political, and social questions.... Read more

On Sept. 25, the Donald Trump administration in the United States again extended the TikTok ban-or-divest law, possibly for the last time. The latest extension to the law, which was passed in 2024 by the Joe Biden administration, includes a deal to transfer TikTok to American owners as a condition... Read more

Liberals and conservatives both oppose censorship of children's literature—unless the writing offends their own ideology, new Cornell research finds.... Read more

A landmark study of thousands of stock trades reveals consistent patterns of profit linked to lawmaking timelines—and proposes a new way forward.... Read more

One of the U.K.'s biggest political problems comes in a small size. The size of a small boat, in fact.... Read more

Price-fixing, bribery, and fraud are leading forms of corporate crime. Since the early 2000s, deferred or non-prosecution agreements (D/NPAs) have increasingly been used in the U.S. and elsewhere to deal with some of these cases, not without controversy.... Read more

A brutal childhood, glorified toughness, destructive images of masculinity: the recent scandal surrounding Elon Musk's father Errol shows how abused power, violence and outdated notions of masculinity continue to have an impact today. According to research by the New York Times, Errol Musk is alleged to have abused five of... Read more

Have you ever forgotten about an upcoming doctor's appointment—only to be reminded the day before by a text from your doctor's office? People with legal obligations might also forget about upcoming court dates, but the consequences are more dire than a no-show fee. Across America, missed court dates routinely result... Read more

Donald Trump's recent state visit to the UK ended without the removal of steel tariffs, which the host nation had been hoping for. For months, the US president's array of "liberation day" tariffs have sparked controversy and caused chaos for America's trading partners.... Read more

On Sept. 28, 2025, at least four people were killed and eight others injured during a Sunday service at a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints chapel in Grand Blanc, Michigan. Just a month earlier, two people died and 21 were injured during a Mass for students at the... Read more

For nearly half a century, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has made it illegal for U.S. citizens and companies to bribe foreign officials. Since 1998, that has been the case for foreign companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges or acting in the U.S., too.... Read more

A new study published in Nature shows that as the global economy more than doubled between 2000 and 2022, it still left billions of people without life's essentials, while rapidly pushing Earth's life-supporting systems further beyond safe limits.... Read more

The call is coming from within the house: Trump was the main source and distributor of disinformation in ethnic and Indigenous press in the US, according to a new study published today by the International Center for Journalists; City St George's, University of London; the University of Maryland; and Arizona... Read more

Researchers say more needs to be done to protect the mental well-being of jurors required to sit through the harrowing evidence presented in some trials.... Read more

The U.S. government faces a shutdown on Oct. 1 unless Congress passes a spending bill to keep the government funded.... Read more

Across the globe, many more men than women hold political office. One reason for this disparity is a seeming gender difference in political ambition: Girls start to show less interest in political activities and pursuits as early as middle school, previous studies have shown. A team of psychology researchers set... Read more

Sixty-four percent of Arab American students say their parents don't fully understand the U.S. school system.... Read more

In Silicon Valley's unofficial literary canon, few works loom as large as The Sovereign Individual. A kind of survival manual for 21st-century tech billionaires, it has been enthusiastically championed by Palantir and Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel (mentor to JD Vance), who wrote the foreword to the 2020 edition.... Read more

Not long after U.S. housing prices reached a record high this summer—the median existing home went for US$435,000 in June—President Donald Trump said that he was considering a plan to make home sales tax-free.... Read more

Red and blue lights blink in the Danish sky. Is it a plane, a satellite, or a drone hovering overhead? Over the past few weeks, more and more Danes have been scanning the skies for mysterious flying objects, caught between curiosity and unease as sightings across the country spark fresh... Read more

Researchers at the Virginia Tech National Security Institute recently used active open-source intelligence techniques to gain a better understanding of how presidential campaigns use email addresses.... Read more

On September 16, 2025, the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry (COI) on the occupied Palestinian territory including East Jerusalem and Israel issued its third report on the situation in Gaza since October 7, 2023.... Read more

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in public administration is increasing worldwide—including in the allocation of social services such as unemployment benefits, housing benefits, and social welfare. However, an international research team from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and the Toulouse School of Economics has shown that those... Read more

For 10 days in April 2025, Pakistan almost came to a standstill. No freight was moving from its only port city, Karachi, towards the population centers in the north. The cause was the government's announcement of a project to build six canals to irrigate the Cholistan Desert in the east... Read more

The UK's new digital ID card scheme, announced by Keir Starmer on September 26, has two big questions swirling around it. Is it a solution to illegal immigration? And will it give the government too much power to monitor people?... Read more

When people think about politics, they often imagine elections, protests or politicians arguing on TV—but what if political processes are also shaped by the small, everyday feelings and moments that most of us might not even notice?... Read more

How can we get the majority to recognize the discrimination experienced by minorities? A new study examines this question. The results show that both cold facts and warm stories can change perceptions—but in different ways.... Read more

People actively seeking conspiracy content involving anti-establishment sentiment—distrust in institutions like the media or health care—will find it regularly on TikTok and YouTube.... Read more

As of September 1, 2024, there are 17 states with clear deflection pathways articulated in state law, steering people with substance use and/or mental health disorders away from incarceration, according to new data published by the Temple University Center for Public Health Law Research.... Read more