social-science

A Harvard Chan/de Beaumont national poll of 2,205 U.S. adults found CDC trust dropped to 50% one year into new federal public health leadership, while state and local health agencies remained more trusted.

Georgia is undergoing one of the most serious erosions of human rights since independence, as the ruling party increasingly resorts to authoritarian practices to preserve its grip on power amid growing public discontent over its approach to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Georgia’s relationship with the European Union, Amnesty International said today. A new […] The post Georgia: Auth…

Vice-president says he tries not to make decisions until he ‘absolutely must’ but has ‘no doubt’ Trump will support him JD Vance said that he will discuss a 2028 US presidential run with his wife after the 2026 midterms . The US vice-president gave insight into his ongoing decision on whether to run during an interview with CBS Sunday Morning where he spoke on his new memoir , Communion: Finding …

A revelatory look at the sprawling tale of the decades-long struggle against apartheid. It’s a nuanced tale that brutally emphasises the personal cost of Mandela’s resistance Nelson Mandela died in December 2013 but he had long before been canonised as a secular saint. Many people – particularly on the political right – found it convenient to forget that for decades they had regarded him as a ter…

A culture that only records its disasters ends up with a biased archive. Wars documented, plagues chronicled, collapses catalogued. The quiet decades go unwritten — not because nothing happened, but because nothing happened that needed a record. Historians read it and assume the centuries were all catastrophe. The learning system works the same way. It has a failure log. From that log it builds r…

Academic Life Your Lived Experience Makes You a Better Scholar What you know from your own life can become the question that shapes your strongest work. By Tanya Golash-Boza During my first semester of graduate school, I took a course on the sociology of education. Midway through the semester, we read John Ogbu and Signithia Fordham’s famous article on “acting White.” The research had been conduc…

President Trump is celebrating turning 80 with a UFC cage-fighting event on the White House's South Lawn, at a time of troubling issues for his presidency.

About 1,000 people demonstrated for and against show in synagogue promoting sale of property in Israel About 1,000 people protested for and against a show promoting the sale of property in Israel on Sunday, with police making 14 arrests. Those opposed to the event, which was held in a north-west London synagogue, claimed it was also selling property in land illegally occupied by Israel and was pa…

The 70-year-old has been prosecuted for his artworks under a law that did not exist when they were created. He should be freed Sixty years ago, Mao Zedong launched the Cultural Revolution – a decade of fanaticism that consumed China. Perhaps 2 million people, from top leaders to impoverished farmers, were killed or driven to suicide for political “crimes” or their family background. Tens of milli…

US president says ‘all sides should stand down’ as mediators seek to conclude preliminary US-Iran peace deal negotiations Middle East crisis – live updates Donald Trump was forced to call for restraint on Sunday after Israel launched fresh airstrikes on Beirut as mediators sought to conclude negotiations on a preliminary peace deal between Iran and the US that would bring the three-month war in t…

Exclusive: devolving tax is part of plans to give local areas more power in areas including justice, health and education Ministers are considering handing over billions of pounds raised by business rates to regional mayors as part of one of the biggest shake-ups of the English tax system in recent years. Steve Reed, the local government secretary, said the government was working on plans to devo…

Coweta county could become third in state history to stage referendum, letting residents challenge a policy or decision A post-church downpour didn’t deter hundreds of people from showing up at Morgan’s Market on a recent Sunday afternoon to sign a petition aimed at giving people in rural Coweta county, Georgia, the chance to vote on a datacenter known as Project Sail and prohibit other datacente…

Platner’s long road ahead shows how Democrats may have fumbled the bag in Maine The Democratic establishment’s early bet on Janet Mills, as its best hope to pick up a coveted Senate seat in Maine, now looks like a clear miscalculation – one that has left the party boxed into a far riskier general election fight than it ever anticipated. By rallying behind the septuagenarian governor, and sidelini…

The recent exodus of people – voluntary and not – from the US threatens to worsen America’s authoritarian slippage The recent frenzy of attempts to redraw electoral districts is ultimately about voice and silence in US democracy. When districts are cut to maximize one ideological perspective, the representation of large concentrations of Americans with opposing views can be diluted or erased. In …

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, Published online: 13 June 2026; doi:10.1057/s41599-026-07873-x Language planning and identity construction in postcolonial educational policies: a comparative analysis of Portuguese-speaking countries

Leadership hopeful to also say tax revenues from new North Sea oil and gasfields should be used to cut energy bills Wes Streeting’s pitch to be the next Labour leader will include a plan to increase high-skilled immigration to the UK, arguing that Donald Trump is telling scientists and AI experts they are not welcome in the US. In a speech this coming week, the former health secretary will also s…

Activists are challenging colonial-era law and demanding ‘free, legal, unfettered, forever rights’ to use beaches Jamaica’s beach access crisis: ‘We shouldn’t be forced to fight for what is already ours’ Campaigners in Jamaica are heading to court next week to try to prevent the government from cutting off access to more of their beaches. They argue that ceding their shorelines to big hotel chain…

Questions about the efficacy of door-knocking feel valid. But I see it as a weapon against autocracy – and a spiritual workout In the fall of 2024, I spotted a middle-aged couple standing on their front lawn in Bucks county, Pennsylvania. I waved and gingerly approached. The woman, whose name appeared in my canvassing app, told me she had never voted in an election before, had never seen politics…

Locals who were children nine years ago say they want to ‘carry on the legacy that older people started’ Yusra Cherbika was 12 years old when Grenfell fire happened a stone’s throw away from her home. She and her family were evacuated on the night of the blaze and spent over a year living in a hotel where she had to continue studying and revising for her exams. At school, she faced empty chairs f…

Activists argue business model is ‘plantation tourism’ designed to benefit elite and disadvantage most Jamaicans Campaigners go to court to fight privatisation of Jamaican coast Devon Taylor remembers when the Mammee Bay shoreline in St Ann, Jamaica, was filled with children frolicking in the ocean after school, fishers haggling with locals over the price of their daily catch and craft vendors ca…