Author: Reporter

The Biden administration is urging U.S. meat processors to make sure children are not being illegally hired to perform dangerous jobs at their plants. The call comes after an investigation found more than 100 kids working overnight for a company that cleans slaughterhouses, handling dangerous equipment like skull splitters and razor-sharp bone saws. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack sent a letter in mid-April to the 18 largest meat and poultry producers urging them to examine the hiring practices at their companies and suppliers. The letter is part of a broader effort by the administration to crack down on the use...

A Wisconsin judge was set to hear arguments in a lawsuit challenging the state’s 174-year-old abortion ban, a statute held in abeyance for nearly five decades until the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade last year. State Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat, filed the lawsuit in Dane County circuit court last June seeking to repeal the ban. Kaul argues that the 1849 law is so old it was essentially adopted without the people’s consent; or alternately, that narrower restrictions on abortion enacted in Wisconsin in 1985 supersede the older statute. The 1985 legislation permits terminating pregnancies...

The American front door is a place where the welcome mat offers friendly greetings, where affable neighbors knock or ring, where boxes brimming with possibility are delivered. It is where home meets a world full of potentially good things. The American front door is a place where signs trumpet words of warning, where cameras monitor visitors in high definition, where intruders find an entry point. It is where only a hunk of wood or metal separates the innermost spaces of home from a world full of chaos. Both conceptions are real. They can and do exist together — usually...

Andrew Lester had already gone to bed when the doorbell rang a little before 10:00 p.m. He got up, grabbed a gun and went to check it out. Seeing a Black male appearing to pull the handle of the front door, police say the 84-year-old White man opened fire. No questions asked. Lester told police he believed someone was attempting to break into his house. That belief, though wrong, could become a defense as Lester faces charges of first-degree assault and armed criminal action for shooting 16-year-old Ralph Yarl, an honor student who went to the wrong Kansas City...

Every year, the night sky grows brighter, and the stars look dimmer. A new study that analyzes data from more than 50,000 amateur stargazers finds that artificial lighting is making the night sky about 10% brighter each year. That is a much faster rate of change than scientists had previously estimated looking at satellite data. The research, which includes data from 2011 to 2022, is published Thursday in the journal Science. “We are losing, year by year, the possibility to see the stars,” said Fabio Falchi, a physicist at the University of Santiago de Compostela, who was not involved...