Parma

China sprints toward next sports goal: half a billion weekend warriors

Steeling herself against a light drizzle, Linda Liu corrals herself into Area E at the Shanghai Marathon starting line, mobile phone strapped to her upper arm.

A Mexican plan to cut homicides by doing good

 Even before he takes office Dec. 1, Mexican President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador, or AMLO, has presented a plan to cut the country’s high crime rate. Homicides in Mexico have hit new records in 2017 and are headed higher in 2018, while many other crimes have intensified across the country. Mexico may have no alternative.

From hiring staff to locating bathrooms: New members of Congress get ready

Except this happens to be Capitol Hill, and these freshmen are the newly-elected members of the 116th Congress. It’s a blunt reminder that serving in Congress, for all its heady glory, is also a real job. Picture a small business owner wrestling with all the usual details of starting a company – but with the rules, regulations, and limitations that apply to a member of the House of Representatives (or the Senate).

Think again? Calls mount for British to vote again on Brexit.

“Brexitometer” it reads – a play on Brexit, the all-consuming national drama – above a row of columns. Ms. Holden and her Brexitometer are part of a widening campaign to hold a second referendum on whether Britain should leave the European Union, which is what 52 percent of voters backed in a 2016 vote. Aylesbury, a prosperous rural market town 45 miles northwest of London, narrowly voted “Leave” in 2016, but many residents are unhappy with the way things have worked out since.