Shreveport

College-age voters: increasingly courted – and thwarted

In coming weeks, plenty of advocacy groups will be on campus in Durham helping students like her figure out how to vote locally. This is a swing state, after all, and the case can be made to college students like Gonzalez that their vote might be more significant here than in their home state. “A lot of students we talk to actually think they can’t vote [here] in this coming election,” says Brian Rogers, a 2015 graduate of Keene State and now a New Hampshire campus organizer with NextGen America, which promotes progressive causes.

Solar panels and rooftop prayers, yet renewed mosque reclaims traditional role

At the Al Arab Mosque in Zarqa, an impoverished city of 1.35 million in northern Jordan that is the country’s second-largest, an imam and neighborhood residents have teamed up and embarked on an experiment bringing the mosque’s traditional role as a community center into the 21st century. “People today think that in a mosque you have to be quiet, serious, and strict,” says Ahmed Zoubi, imam of the Al Arab Mosque. This comes from a 20th-century legacy of both a weakening of religious institutions by colonial powers and of then-newly independent states which, while seeking to assert their authority, feared the use of mosques as a platform for political activity.

Saving Venezuela with the long arm of the law

A special court set up by the 54-nation African Union convicted a former dictator in Chad of crimes against humanity. Now many countries in Latin America want to do something similar, all in the name of regional solidarity for democracy and rule of law. On Sept. 25, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Paraguay agreed to ask the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate crimes against humanity in Venezuela.

In a first for Russia, Moscow agrees with locals that their election was rigged

It is fairly common to hear public complaints that fraud is boosting pro-Kremlin candidates in Russian elections. There will be no earthquake if, when the election is replayed in three months as the law requires, the governorship of the relatively quiet Pacific coast territory should pass from the ruling party, United Russia, to the loyal opposition Communist Party.