Author: Reporter

Census Bureau makes biggest modification in decades to how it defines meaning of “urban” America

More than 1,100 cities, towns and villages in the U.S. lost their status as urban areas in late December as the U.S. Census Bureau released a new list of places considered urban based on revised criteria. Around 4.2 million residents living in 1,140 small cities, hamlets, towns and villages that lost their urban designation were bumped into the rural category. The new criteria raised the population threshold from 2,500 to 5,000 people and housing units were added to the definition. The change matters because rural and urban areas often qualify for different types of federal funding for transportation, housing,...

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Section 1326: Why the immigration fight is fueled by a 1920s law based on anti-Latino racism

As thousands of children were taken from their parents at the southern border during a Trump administration crackdown on illegal crossings, a federal public defender in San Diego set out to find new strategies to go after the longstanding deportation law fueling the family separations. The resulting legal defense that Kara Hartzler would help draft in the coming years, work that continued even after a judge halted the general practice at the Mexico-U.S. border in June 2018, was unprecedented. It exposed Section 1326 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which makes it a crime to unlawfully return to the...

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Last Sherlock Holmes book enters public domain with massive cache of vintage creative works in 2023

Sherlock Holmes is finally free to the American public in 2023. The long-running contested copyright dispute over Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s tales of a whipsmart detective — which has even ensnared Enola Holmes — finally come to an end as the 1927 copyrights expired on January 1 include Conan Doyle’s last Sherlock Holmes work. Alongside the short-story collection “The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes,” books such as Virginia Woolf’s “To The Lighthouse,” Ernest Hemingway’s “Men Without Women,” William Faulkner’s “Mosquitoes” and Agatha Christie’s “The Big Four” — an Hercule Poirot mystery — will become public domain as the calendar turns...

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Aaron Rodgers has entire postseason to ponder his future after playoff hopes crushed by Packers loss

Aaron Rodgers will have the entire postseason to ponder his future. The four-time MVP and the Green Bay Packers will not be participating in the playoffs. Rodgers was intercepted by Kerby Joseph on what might have been the final pass of the future Hall of Famer’s career, and Green Bay lost 20-16 to the Detroit Lions on Sunday night in a game the Packers needed to win to reach the playoffs. Although he is under contract for next season, the 39-year-old Rodgers has said he does not know whether he will continue playing. “It’s a little raw right now....

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President Lula vows to punish pro-Bolsonaro supporters for January 8 attack on Brazil’s Congress

Brazilian authorities were picking up pieces and investigating on January 9 after thousands of ex-President Jair Bolsonaro’s supporters stormed Congress, the Supreme Court and presidential palace then trashed the nation’s highest seats of power. The protesters were seeking military intervention to either restore the far-right Bolsonaro to power or oust the newly inaugurated leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in scenes of chaos and destruction reminiscent of the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Rioters donning the green and yellow of the national flag on January 8 broke windows, toppled furniture, hurled computers and printers to the...

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How America’s racial hate empowers a vast network of fixers to prey upon migrants crossing from Mexico

When migrants arrive to the main crossing point into southern Mexico, a steamy city with no job opportunities, a place packed with foreigners eager to keep moving north, they soon learn the only way to cut through the red tape and expedite what can be a monthslong process is to pay someone. With soaring numbers of people entering Mexico, a sprawling network of lawyers, fixers and middlemen has exploded in the country. At every step in a complicated process, opportunists are ready to provide documents or counsel to migrants who can afford to speed up the system — and...

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