Author: Reporter

A few years ago, Pope Francis told the head of the main Vatican-backed Catholic women’s organization to be “brave” in pushing for change for women in the Catholic Church. Maria Lia Zervino took his advice and in 2021 wrote Francis a letter, then made it public, saying flat out that the Catholic Church owed a big debt to half of humanity and that women deserved to be at the table where church decisions are made, not as mere “ornaments” but as protagonists. Francis appears to have taken note, and this week he will open a global gathering of Catholic...

GRAPHIC PHOTO WARNING: This gallery contains news images from war that some viewers may find disturbing. Backed by a barrage of rockets, dozens of Hamas militants broke out of the blockaded Gaza Strip and into nearby Israeli towns, killing dozens and abducting others in an unprecedented surprise early morning attack during a major Jewish holiday on October 7. In an assault of startling breadth, Hamas gunmen rolled into as many as 22 locations outside the Gaza Strip, including towns and other communities as far as 15 miles from the Gaza border. In some places, they roamed for hours, gunning...

After being thwarted by Congress, President Joe Biden will use his executive authority to create a New Deal-style American Climate Corps that will serve as a major green jobs training program. In an announcement in September, the White House said the program will employ more than 20,000 young adults who will build trails, plant trees, help install solar panels and do other work to boost conservation and help prevent catastrophic wildfires. The climate corps had been proposed in early versions of the sweeping climate law approved last year but was jettisoned amid strong opposition from Republicans and concerns about...

Fall has arrived in Scandinavia, which means Nobel Prize season is here. The start of October is when the Nobel committees get together in Stockholm and Oslo to announce the winners of the yearly awards. First up, as usual, is the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology, which was awarded on October 2 to two scientists for discoveries that enabled the development of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19. The prizes in physics, chemistry, literature, peace, and economics will follow, with one announcement every weekday until October 9. Here are some things to know about the Nobel Prizes: AN IDEA MORE...

The Environmental Protection Agency is delaying plans to tighten air quality standards for ground-level ozone, better known as smog, despite a recommendation by a scientific advisory panel to lower air pollution limits to protect public health. The decision by EPA Administrator Michael Regan means that one of the agency’s most important air quality regulations will not be updated until well after the 2024 presidential election. “I have decided that the best path forward is to initiate a new statutory review of the ozone (standard) and the underlying air quality criteria,” Regan wrote in a letter to the EPA advisory...

Earth has sweltered through its hottest Northern Hemisphere summer ever measured, with a record warm August capping a season of brutal and deadly temperatures, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Last month was not only the hottest August scientists ever recorded by far with modern equipment, it was also the second hottest month measured, behind only July 2023, WMO and the European climate service Copernicus announced in September. August was about 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than pre-industrial averages. That is the threshold that the world is trying not to pass, though scientists are more concerned about rises in temperatures...