TikTok will pay Alabama at least $100 million and impose new restrictions on teen users under a settlement reached days before the company was scheduled to face a jury over allegations that it designed its platform to addict children and misled consumers about its safety, Reuters reported. The payout could reach $300 million if 40…
When space becomes the scarcest resource in a home, the objects inside it change to match. The average price of a new condominium in the Tokyo metropolitan area reached approximately ¥101.35 million(roughly $690,000) in the first half of 2026 — up 13.1 percent year over year, according to data cited in reporting by Kyodo News in The Mainichi. That…
USCIS completed 75% fewer naturalizations in May 2026 than two years prior. The backlog is growing anyway. USCIS completed 20,795 naturalization applications in May 2026, down from 83,317 in May 2024 — a roughly 75 percent decline. At the same time, the denial rate for Form N-400 applications climbed from 8.3 percent to 18.1 percent, according to an analysis of USCIS data by the…
A state appeals court ruled that clearing a record means something — and that institutions do not get to retrieve it anyway. There is a gap built into most discussions of criminal record expungement, and it lives in the distance between what a court seals and what a background check reveals. California’s criminal record clearing…
When the Downturn Arrives, Someone Has to Absorb It A business facing a weak market has a limited set of moves. It can cut costs, borrow against better months ahead, shrink its headcount, or close. What some Nigerian employers are doing instead is subtler and, for workers, more consequential: keeping the staff, keeping the storefront,…
A Statutory Deadline Is Only as Strong as the System That Checks It There is a particular kind of tenant knowledge that develops when a law exists but enforcement does not keep pace. One social-housing resident described it plainly to The Guardian: she has to leave the mould on the walls, because if she wipes…
When the Paperwork Can’t Be Verified, Neither Can the Teacher By Social Storytellers Collective A teacher in Accra or Lagos can hold a degree, years of classroom experience and full professional recognition at home, and still find the door to England’s classrooms harder to open than it was a month ago. The reason has little…
Two men in northern England have the same medical condition, require similar around-the-clock assistance and live roughly 40 miles apart. One has been able to take an overseas trip with his personal assistants, exploring places he might otherwise never see and reclaiming a basic adult experience. The other says he has effectively been unable to…
A federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration acted unlawfully when the U.S. Department of Education terminated roughly $600 million in teacher-training grants in 2025. U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley in Massachusetts concluded that the department’s directive violated federal administrative law and was arbitrary and capricious. But the ruling contains an important limitation: it does not automatically…
A college student can qualify for federal food assistance, spend most of the day on campus and still be unable to use those benefits to buy a prepared meal from the campus cafeteria. Two bills introduced in the U.S. Senate on September 18 seek to change that mismatch between eligibility and usability. The Hot Meals for…