In 1959, the woman who brought me into this world bundled me in a basket and placed me in a Hong Kong stairwell near Sai Yeung Choi Street, a bustling region of the British colony. I was 4 days old. A passerby called the police, who transported me to St. Christopher's Home, the largest non-government-run orphanage on the island.
The decision wasn't made lightly. I can remember walking the sidewalks of our Colorado exurb, trying to decide if this was the right choice. In that sunny winter weather, our daughter bundled up in a stroller, the dog investigating lawns, our conversations would go: "Are you happy here?" "I feel like if we stay we're going to get old in front of the TV." "Can you imagine how much better the food will be?" "If we don't do it now, we'll probably never do it."
The law formalizes policies in order to promote Mandarin as the 'national common language' for official purposes such as education and public affairs. As part of the law, educational institutions will now be obliged to teach in Mandarin, with teenagers required to have a 'basic grasp' of Mandarin when finishing their compulsory education.
Chen pays just 1200 RMB, or $168, a month for her apartment in faux Venice in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu. It's so cheap that it's allowed Chen to retire at the tender age of 28. Experts say Chen is part of a broader trend that has seen a growing number of young people across China migrating to small towns and cities, taking advantage of cheap real estate prices that have been plummeting since the COVID pandemic.
People still want children, and the question is why are they not having them? A sense of security is essential for realizing the desire to have children. The succession of crises has prevented many people from turning that wish into reality.
The pace is fast, the rules are complicated, and the players are often competitive, but it's more accessible than ever to try your hand. People around the Bay Area are gravitating toward mahjong at brewpubs, bookstores and other public spaces to learn this age-old pastime, which developed in China in the 19th century and spread around the globe in the 20th.
More than 200,000 people living legally in the UK are on the 10-year route to settled status, which requires legal migrants to renew 30-month visas four times at a cost of 3,908.50 including healthcare costs per renewal before they can apply for indefinite leave to remain (ILR). Under proposals by the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, if people have used public funds, even in work, the wait would double to 20 years.
That local exodus is documented by Cornell-led research that mapped annual moves between U.S. neighborhoods from 2010 to 2019 in detail 4,600 times greater than standard public data. Called MIGRATE, the new, publicly available dataset revealed that most of those displaced remained within the affected county - moves not captured in county-level public migration data aggregated every five years.
Citizens of Nowhere is a documentary short about stateless people in the United States individuals who, through circumstance or legal technicality, belong to no nation. Without passports, citizenship or legal recognition, they live in a state of uncertainty. From finding work and accessing education, to simply existing within a system that does not officially recognise them, stateless people face endless bureaucratic barriers.
There was a time I thought I'd spend the rest of my life in New York. After more than a decade in Manhattan, the streets felt like my own, and my identity felt entwined with the city. Even after having two babies on the Upper West Side, I was constantly plotting and planning on how we could make this lifestyle work long-term. And then, my husband and I stumbled upon our dream home in a distant Connecticut suburb.
Around 1.9 million people with university-level qualifications were at risk of poverty in 2025, an increase of 350,000 compared with 2022. The figures from Germany's official statistics office were released in response to a request from the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW). The rise comes as the number of graduates grew to 21 million nationwide. Yet data from the Federal Employment Agency show unemployment among academics climbed to 3.3%, up from 2.2% three years earlier.
At the current rate, China's population could drop as low as 800 million by the year 2100, according to the United Nations. China's population fell for the fourth year in a row in 2025 after the country's birth rate dropped to its lowest point since records began almost 80 years ago, according to figures released by the national statistics office in Beijing on Monday.
China's birth rate fell last year to its lowest level since 1949, highlighting a deepening demographic struggle for Beijing even as officials roll out new subsidies to encourage couples to have more children. The number of births per 1,000 people dropped to 5.6, the lowest since at least the founding of the People's Republic, according to data released by the National Statistics Bureau on Monday (Jan. 19). The number of newborns decreased 1.6 million, the most since 2020, to 7.9 million.
The Trump administration really wants Americans to have more kids. President Trump, the self-proclaimed " fertilization president," has called for a new " baby boom." Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says communities with big families should get more government funds. The on-again-off-again Trump ally Elon Musk, father of at least 14, has warned that "civilization will disappear" if we don't get busy.
The U.S.'s population growth is slowing as immigration has declined amid President Donald Trump's deportation push and stricter border policies. According to new Census Bureau data, the drop-off is the biggest since the COVID-19 pandemic. From July 2024 to July 2025, the population of the United States grew by 1.8 million people (about 0.5%). This was mostly driven by immigration: During that period, the U.S. added 1.3 million immigrants.
In case you didn't get the memo, everyone is feeling very Chinese these days. Across social media, people are proclaiming that "You met me at a very Chinese time of my life," while performing stereotypically Chinese-coded activities like eating dim sum or wearing the viral Adidas Chinese jacket. The trend blew up so much in recent weeks that celebrities like comedian Jimmy O Yang and influencer Hasan Piker even got in on it. It has now evolved into variations like " Chinamaxxing" (acting increasingly more Chinese) and " u will turn Chinese tomorrow " (a kind of affirmation or blessing).
Available for a one-time payment of the equivalent of $1.15 in US dollars, the app - with the evocative name of "Are You Dead?" - is basically a large countdown timer that you have to reset regularly, and which alerts an emergency contact if you let the time run out. As the BBC reports, the app's counter is set to two days by default. After downloading, a user simply has to open the app and tap a large button to reset it.
