Mapping the Underwater Eighth Continent
For hundreds of years, explorers and researchers believed Earth had an eighth continent, but they couldn’t find it. Then in 2017 scientists discovered an underwater landmass located southeast of Australia, under the islands of New Zealand. They named the underwater continent Zealandia. They began mapping parts of the landmass in 2019. Now in 2023, an […]
YOU DECIDE: Should the U.S. Lower the Voting Age to Sixteen?
New Zealand’s parliament is currently debating whether to lower the country’s voting age from eighteen to sixteen. This comes after the New Zealand’s Supreme Court ruled that setting the voting age at eighteen is age discrimination. Several other nations are considering similar measures, while nine–Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador, Malta, Nicaragua, and Scotland and Wales–have […]
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Widespread Protests Rock Russia Have you heard of Alexei Navalny? He is an activist, lawyer, and blogger who leads the Russian opposition movement against President Vladimir Putin. Navalny has millions of followers and regularly calls out Putin and his United Russia party with accusations of corruption. He compares the current state of the Russian government […]
Coronavirus Slows in Some Countries
This week’s story update on Election Central looks at how some foreign nations have successfully handled the outbreak of COVID-19. How did they accomplish it? As the COVID-19 pandemic enters its fourth month here in the United States, very little seems to have improved. Many states are in the process of reopening, even though rates […]
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Volcano Eruption Claims Fifteen Lives Last week, at least fifteen people were killed and fourteen more severely injured when a volcano exploded on an island off the coast of New Zealand. It is understood that they perished from the heat, ash, and toxic gases that were released by the eruption. So why were 47 people […]
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Medical Fraud Scam Unveiled You’ve probably already heard about the recent college admissions scandal that rocked U.S. higher education. But last week, 24 people also were arrested in connection with another scandal that was far more lucrative (though decidedly less glamorous): medical braces. Here’s what happened: call centers in Latin America and the Philippines called […]
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Next Steps for FIRST STEP? In February, Election Central took a look at the new FIRST STEP Act, which was signed into law by the president on December 21, 2018, and seeks to reform the current U.S. prison system in the hopes of lowering the rate of recidivism (the rate at which people who have […]
New Zealand Grapples with Mass Shooting
On March 15, fifty people were killed and another fifty wounded when a 28-year-old Australian shooter attacked two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Here, btw takes a closer look at the tragedy. What Happened? At about 1:40 pm on March 15, the shooter, a white supremacist dressed in military gear, walked into the Al Noor […]
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Fight Fire with . . . a Bill? You can’t stop wildfires with a law. Or can you? California state legislators, facing a second year of record-level wildfire destruction, are trying to do just that. One proposal is to pass laws requiring a more rigorous emergency alert system, to give more people time to evacuate. […]
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Captain America: Civil War The Marvel Cinematic Universe released another wildly successful movie earlier this month. With a budget of around $250 million, Captain America: Civil War kicked off the (now) official start of the summer movie season and brought in over $675.8 million. The show pits The Avenger characters against one another in an epic […]