Short Reads

Most Christians in America say that whether someone is a man or a woman is determined by their sex at birth. Yet, many religious "nones" have different views.

Nearly 364,000 foreign students with F-1 visas were newly enrolled at a U.S. college or university in 2016, double the number at the outset of the Great Recession.

Since the end of World War II, there have been 225 successful coups (counting the events in Zimbabwe) in countries with populations greater than 500,000, according to the Center for Systemic Peace, which maintains extensive datasets on various forms of armed conflict and political violence. Most coups occurred during the height of the Cold War, from the 1960s through the 1980s.

In the next 20 years, Americans anticipate computer programs that diagnose and treat most diseases, fully automated stores and other technological advances.

The number of assaults against Muslims in the United States rose significantly between 2015 and 2016, easily surpassing the modern peak reached in 2001.

Americans’ concerns about prescription drug abuse have risen over the past four years, with some of largest increases coming among well-educated adults.

Read a Q&A with George Demacopolous, a professor of theology at Fordham University, to examine trends and issues in the Orthodox Christian world.

Most Americans say that NAFTA is good for the United States, and relatively few say that Mexico or Canada benefit more from the agreement than the U.S. does.

Today, there are approximately 260 million Orthodox Christians in the world, accounting for 12% of the global Christian population. Read key takeaways about Orthodox Christians.

While eight-in-ten Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say that whether someone is a man or a woman is determined by the sex they were assigned at birth, most Democrats and Democratic leaners (64%) take the opposite view and say a person’s gender can be different from the sex they were assigned at birth.