False immigrant rumors threaten to unravel an American town on the upswing

Springfield is a town on edge. It’s been five days since it was thrust into the national spotlight by baseless — and to many, racist — rumors of Haitian residents killing and eating wildlife and pets, and its economic comeback has been dramatically overshadowed by tensions that once rarely reached beyond city council meetings. The city has been forced to close schools, City Hall and other municipal buildings because of bomb threats and safety fears tied to the rumors, and Haitian immigrants are afraid to leave their homes because of anger directed at them.

How Colleges Are Changing Their Rules on Protesting

Across the country, some universities have enacted a wave of new rules and tightened restrictions around protest and speech in an effort to avoid a repeat of the spring semester, when thousands of people were arrested at protests and encampments prompted by the Israel-Hamas war. The rules vary from campus to campus, but they generally set limits on when and where protests can occur, and clearly prohibit encampments.

Rights probe points to ‘unprecedented’ repression in Venezuela

Violence used against opponents of the Venezuelan authorities has reached unprecedented levels, a top independent human rights probe alleged, citing arrests, sexual abuse and torture as just some of the methods used by the Government of President Nicolas Maduro to stay in power. In a new report, the Human Rights Council-mandated investigators described how security forces had raided dozens of homes of suspected critics of the Government “just using social media videos as the only evidence to arrest people.”