Latitude News

The Mormon Church could be majority Latino by 2015, and our newest podcast hones in on one person among those faithful masses. At the young age of 23, Isaac has learned more than most about watching the future slip through his fingers. The trials he has faced help shape his outlook on life. "When we let fear take over us," he says, "we lose faith, and when we lose faith, we don’t have a future."

Here’s the basic plot line: that electronic gadget you’re using to listen to this story? Chances are, it’s connected to the war in Congo. Laptops, smart phones, tablets—they all need the rare minerals that Congo has in abundance. And that means that our gadgets are helping to fuel child labor—and rape—on a colossal scale. It’s a long journey from here to there, and it’s complicated. But lawmakers in the U.S. want to leverage our consumer power to bring change to the Congo. The question is: Do they stand a chance of making a difference?

When it comes to marijuana laws, the United States is a basket case. Creator of the "War on Drugs," the U.S. is also home to two states — Colorado and Washington — whose voters recently approved the world's most liberal marijuana policies. But as it turns out, the U.S. and Mexico have a shared marijuana history. We may have created the War on Drugs, but Mexico started Reefer Madness.

The horsemeat trade route from the U.S. to the EU is riddled with fraud, shoddy record-keeping, lax enforcement and meat tainted with drugs people should never consume.

Given the vitriolic nature of the election that is, thankfully, behind us; given the fact that Islam and Mormonism have become celebrities in the U.S. for all the wrong reasons — Latitude News asked two Utah residents, an American-born Mormon and an Iraqi-born Muslim, to sit down for a conversation on faith.

Could Cleveland, Ohio became the American Venice, a global art hub on the shores of Lake Erie? Giancarlo Calicchia thinks so. He says Cleveland is a "magical" city with "a serious lack of self-esteem."

When Jo applied for jobs in China as an English teacher, she confronted signs reminiscent of the Jim Crow South: Whites Only, the school websites read. But her life-long fascination with Asian culture drove her past the signs - Jo quickly landed a job in the industrial city of Yuyao, where she was the only American. Five years later, Jo is married to a native Chinese, and she is the most recognizable face in Yuyao. This story recounts how Jo overcame institutionalized prejudice in China, and how she deals with the constant attention she receives because of her skin color.

As American evangelicals have lost battles against the gay rights movement in the U.S., some have taken the fight to countries that are friendlier to their agenda. Uganda has been very friendly to an American pastor named Scott Lively, who blames homosexuals for some of the worst atrocities in human history. Listen to hear Lively tell his own story, and to learn how his inflammatory message has boomeranged back to the U.S., tearing the American evangelical community in half.

Until the 1980s, cod fueled growth in North America. It still does in Norway