Author: Reporter

The Vatican responded to Indigenous demands and formally repudiated the “Doctrine of Discovery,” the theories backed by 15th-century “papal bulls” that legitimized the colonial-era seizure of Native lands and form the basis of some property laws today. A Vatican statement on March 30 said the papal bulls, or decrees, “did not adequately reflect the equal dignity and rights of Indigenous peoples” and have never been considered expressions of the Catholic faith. The statement, from the Vatican’s development and education offices, marked a historic recognition of the Vatican’s own complicity in colonial-era abuses committed by European powers. It was issued...

The pandemic took a harsh toll on U.S. teen girls’ mental health, with almost 60% reporting feelings of persistent sadness or hopelessness, according to a government survey released in mid-February that bolsters earlier data. Sexual violence, suicidal thoughts, suicidal behavior and other mental health woes affected many teens regardless of race or ethnicity, but girls and LGBTQ youth fared the worst on most measures, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report. More than 17,000 U.S. high school students were surveyed in class in the fall of 2021. In 30 years of collecting similar data, “we’ve never...

A 2010 federal law that boosted nutrition standards for school meals may have begun to help slow the rise in obesity among America’s children, even teenagers who can buy their own snacks, a new study showed. The national study found a small but significant decline in the average body mass index of more than 14,000 schoolkids ages 5 to 18 whose heights and weights were tracked before and after implementation of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010. The study is new evidence that improving the quality of school meals through legislation might be one way to help shift...

Blame geography for the U.S. getting hit by stronger, costlier, more varied and frequent extreme weather than anywhere on the planet, several experts said. Two oceans, the Gulf of Mexico, the Rocky Mountains, jutting peninsulas like Florida, clashing storm fronts and the jet stream combine to naturally brew the nastiest of weather. That is only part of it. Nature dealt the United States a bad hand, but people have made it much worse by what, where and how we build. Then add climate change, and “buckle up. More extreme events are expected,” said Rick Spinrad, head of the National...

Offshore oil and gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico are releasing far more climate-changing methane than official estimates show, according to a new study published in April. Climate scientists found the additional methane coming from oil and gas platforms in the Gulf region raises their carbon intensity, the amount of climate-changing gas per unit of energy in the fuel, to twice as much as estimated by U.S. agencies like the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. The study is published in PNAS, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Reductions in both methane and carbon dioxide emissions are...