News & Features

The leadership and activist numbers are coming from Generation ’97, young people born during the 1997 handover of the then-British Crown colony to Chinese sovereignty. These youngsters, most still in the secondary level (high school), are finding themselves at the forefront of a populist struggle for electoral rights. They are motivated by anxieties about local identity and a consequent need for better representation, reflecting attitudes that differ subtly but significantly from the traditional opposition parties. 

The last year has seen the emergence and popularity of anonymous social networks and apps such as Secret, Whisper and Anomo that promised users anonymity and a diminished digital trace. These anonymous networks seem to be a cultural reaction to the oversaturation of social media and the invasions of privacy on behalf of the corporations and the government. As people become more and more aware of just how permanent and sellable the digital footprint really is, there is a new consciousness growing within the online self. 

Redheads are starting a movement to combat the everyday discrimination they face. But instead of a shot heard round the world, their revolution is starting out with a giggle.
From “Kick a Ginger Day,” on September 20, to the ease with which they are derogatorily referred to as “gingers” in everyday interactions, the casual discrimination of redheads is widespread and commonplace. Now, with movements raising awareness of the blatant discrimination of redheads, "gingers" are, if sheepishly, starting to stand up for themselves. 

Immigration reform advocates will need to overcome their frustration and work hard to get pro-immigrant voters to the polls in November for what will, essentially, be a vote of confidence in Obama’s commitment to (very soon) take practical steps toward (substantially) better immigration policy. Of course, the challenge in getting demoralized pro-immigrant voters to turn out is, indeed, formidable. 

Transnational organized crime generates $2 trillion in revenue per year globally, roughly the size of Britain’s economy, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Wonder how much money those fake Luis Vuitton handbags and DVDs of the latest Hollywood hits bring in? At $654 billion annually, counterfeiting and intellectual property piracy tops the global list of most lucrative illicit activities. 

Civil rights leaders  hope to increase African American youth voter turnout by citing the police shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., a city where only 12 percent of registered voters turned out to vote in the last city council elections. Community organizers in New Orleans and Houston -- two cities with a long history of confrontations between African Americans and the police -- have mixed views on whether outrage over Ferguson will translate into voter participation. 

Despite the seemingly endless array of purse, jewelry and clothing salesmen in Manhattan’s Chinatown, longtime businesses are struggling to make it with increasing rents and lack of loyal clientele. With other Chinatowns in Brooklyn and Queens, Chinatown’s survival in Manhattan is in question. Many Fouzhon immigrants are living in places like Sunset Park and Bensonhurst in Brooklyn and Jackson Heights and Flushing in Queens, where they can have a taste of home and pay a lot less rent. 

Scotland has voted decisively against breaking from the United Kingdom and becoming an independent country. The key thing to grasp is that there is no precedent for a modern, highly integrated country breaking into two pieces in peacetime. True, Czechoslovakia divided into the Czech Republic and Slovakia back in 1992. But both new countries were emerging from communism. Both had to bring in huge numbers of new laws, rules and regulations to create modern, market-based democracies almost from scratch.