Author: Reporter

A generation ago nonprofit organizations regularly lobbied for legislation and served as advocates on issues. But according to a recent survey, charities are now far more reluctant to seek to influence lawmakers and other policymakers. The survey, conducted for Independent Sector, a membership organization of nonprofits and grantmakers, found that less than one-third of nonprofits have actively advocated for policy issues or lobbied on specific legislation over the past five years, down from nearly three-quarters of nonprofits in 2000. And even though nonprofits work on a range of issues that are affected by policy choices, such as funding for...

Advertisers are fleeing social media platform X over concerns about their ads showing up next to pro-Nazi content and hate speech on the site in general, with billionaire owner Elon Musk inflaming tensions with his own posts endorsing an antisemitic conspiracy theory. IBM and Comcast said that they stopped advertising on X after a report said their ads were appearing alongside material praising Nazis — a fresh setback as the platform formerly known as Twitter tries to win back big brands and their ad dollars, X’s main source of revenue. The liberal advocacy group Media Matters said in a...

The country’s largest Christian university was fined $37.7 million by the federal government amid accusations that it misled students about the cost of its graduate programs. Grand Canyon University, which has more than 100,000 students, mostly in online programs, faces the largest fine of its kind ever issued by the U.S. Education Department. The university dismissed the allegations as “lies and deceptive statements.” An Education Department investigation found that Grand Canyon lied to more than 7,500 current and former students about the cost of its doctoral programs. As far back as 2017, the university told students its doctoral programs...

Storms, floods, fires and other extreme weather events led to more than 43 million displacements involving children between 2016 and 2021, according to a United Nations report. More than 113 million displacements of children will occur in the next three decades, estimated the UNICEF report released on October 6, which took into account risks from flooding rivers, cyclonic winds and floods that follow a storm. Some children, like 10-year-old Shukri Mohamed Ibrahim, are already on the move. Her family left their home in Somalia after dawn prayers on a Saturday morning five months ago. The worst drought in more...

Earth is exceeding its “safe operating space for humanity” in six of nine key measurements of its health, and two of the remaining three are headed in the wrong direction, a new study said. Earth’s climate, biodiversity, land, freshwater, nutrient pollution and “novel” chemicals (human-made compounds like microplastics and nuclear waste) are all out of whack, a group of international scientists said in September’s journal Science Advances. Only the acidity of the oceans, the health of the air and the ozone layer are within the boundaries considered safe, and both ocean and air pollution are heading in the wrong...

Community leaders along the Mississippi River worried that dry southwestern states will someday try to take the river’s water may soon take their first step toward blocking such a diversion. Mayors from cities along the river are expected to vote on whether to support a new compact among the river’s 10 states at this week’s annual meeting of the Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative, according to its executive director Colin Wellenkamp. Supporters of a compact hope it will strengthen the region’s collective power around shared goals like stopping water from leaving the corridor. “It is the most important...