Author: Reporter

In a corner of their Mexico City office, activists from Catholics for the Right to Decide keep an image of the Virgin Mary close to a green scarf that reads: “Mary was consulted to be mother of God.” For these Catholic women, prayer does not conflict with their fight for abortion access nor does their devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe prevent them from supporting LGBTQ+ rights. “You might think that one cannot be a feminist and a Catholic,” said activist Cinthya Ramírez. “But being women of faith does not mean that we oppose progressivity, human rights or sexual...

Snuggling on the sofa across from the Christmas tree, Sol proudly showed off the dog her foster parents gave her for earning all A’s even though she crossed the southern U.S. border knowing very little English. “They helped me a lot,” said the 14-year-old eighth grader. Then she blushed, hid her face in Cosmo’s fur, and added in Spanish, “Oooh, I said that English!” Sol — who is from Argentina — is among tens of thousands of children who arrive in the United States without a parent, during a huge surge in immigrants that’s prompting congressional debate to change...

Almost 80 years after the Holocaust, about 245,000 Jewish survivors are still living across more than 90 countries, a new census report revealed on January 23. Nearly half of them, or 49%, are living in Israel, while 18% are in Western Europe, 16% in the United States, and 12% in countries of the former Soviet Union, according to a study by the New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, also referred to as the Claims Conference. Before the publication of the demographic report, there were only vague estimates about how many Holocaust survivors are still alive. Their...

In the aftermath of World War II and the murder by Nazi Germany of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust, the world united around a now-familiar pledge: Never again. A key part of that lofty aspiration was the drafting of a convention that codified and committed nations to prevent and punish a new crime, sometimes called the crime of crimes: genocide. The convention was drawn up in 1948, the year of Israel’s creation as a Jewish state. Now that country is being accused at the United Nations’ highest court of committing the very crime so deeply woven into its...

Winter is well underway, inflicting its usual array of symptoms like coughs, nasal congestion, fatigue, and fever, and this year a new COVID-19 variant is dominating the scoreboard. COVID-19 is leading hospital admissions among the respiratory viruses, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Since the beginning of January, 25 U.S. states had high or very high levels for respiratory illnesses with fever, cough, and other symptoms. That was down from 37 states in early January, the CDC said. Since the beginning of October, there have been at least 16 million illnesses, 180,000 hospitalizations, and 11,000...