Short Reads

Last year, 84,000 people left Puerto Rico for the U.S. mainland, a 38% increase from 2010. At the same time, the number of people moving to Puerto Rico from the mainland declined.

Thanks to texting and social media, teens today have many more ways to reach out to a crush than in the analog days of using the family telephone and passing notes in the hallways.

The European Union is awash with languages, but European students study one foreign language far more than any other.

Hundreds of thousands of mostly young refugees are fleeing into Europe, where most countries have rapidly aging (and sometimes shrinking) populations.

Today’s volume of immigrants is in some ways a return to America’s past.

Long years of service have been the norm for past speakers, most of whom had accumulated twice as much time in the House as today’s candidates before wielding the gavel.

The regulation of abortion may vary widely from country to country, but nearly all nations – 96% – allow women to terminate their pregnancies in order to save their lives.

Two-thirds of Americans say doctors should be allowed by law to assist patients who are terminally ill and living in severe pain to commit suicide.

Four-in-ten immigrants arriving in the U.S. in the past five years had completed at least a bachelor’s degree. In 1970, only 20% of newly arrived immigrants were similarly educated.