Author: Reporter

Joplin officials say they have big plans for $13.8 million of pandemic relief funds the tornado-ravaged southwestern Missouri city received under a two-year-old federal law. Yet the latest federal records show none of the money has been spent, or even budgeted. In fact, about 6,300 cities and counties — nearly 1 in 4 nationwide — reported no expenditures as of this spring, according to an Associated Press analysis of data released by the U.S. Treasury Department. About 5,100 of those listed no projects — either planned or underway. So what gives? Is the money not needed? Are cities just...

The European Union decided on December 14 to open accession negotiations with Ukraine, a significant moment and stunning reversal for a country at war that had struggled to find the backing for its membership aspirations and long faced obstinate opposition from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. European Council President Charles Michel, who was chairing a Brussels summit of the EU’s 27 leaders where the decision was made, called it “a clear signal of hope for their people and our continent.” Although the process between opening negotiations and Ukraine finally becoming a member could take many years, Ukrainian President Volodymyr...

Emboldened by minimal battlefield gains and flagging Western support for Ukraine, a relaxed and confident Russian dictator Vladimir Putin said there would be no peace until Russia achieved its goals, which he said remain unchanged after nearly two years of fighting. It was Putin’s first formal news conference that Western media were allowed to attend since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. The highly choreographed session, which lasted over four hours and included questions from ordinary Russians about things like the price of eggs and leaky gymnasium roofs, was more about spectacle than scrutiny. But while...

How do you cook a meal when a staple ingredient is unaffordable? This question is playing out in households around the world as they face shortages of essential foods like rice, cooking oil and onions. That is because countries have imposed restrictions on the food they export to protect their own supplies from the combined effect of the war in Ukraine, El Nino’s threat to food production and increasing damage from climate change. For Caroline Kyalo, a 28-year-old who works in a salon in Kenya’s capital of Nairobi, it was a question of trying to figure out how to...

By the end of the century, the U.S. population will be declining without substantial immigration, older adults will outnumber children and White, non-Hispanic residents will account for less than 50% of the population, according to projections released in November by the U.S. Census Bureau. The population projections offer a glimpse of what the nation may look like at the turn of the next century, though a forecast decades into the future cannot predict the unexpected like a global pandemic. The projections can help the U.S. prepare for change, from anticipating the demands of health care for seniors to providing...

The human species has topped 8 billion, with longer lifespans offsetting fewer births, but world population growth continues a long-term trend of slowing down, the U.S. Census Bureau said in November. The bureau estimates the global population exceeded the threshold on September 26, a precise date the agency said to take with a grain of salt. The United Nations estimated the number was passed 10 months earlier, having declared November 22, 2022, the “Day of 8 Billion,” the Census Bureau pointed out in a statement. The discrepancy is due to countries counting people differently — or not at all....