Author: Reporter

The health of U.S. children has deteriorated over the past 17 years, with kids today more likely to have obesity, chronic diseases, and mental health problems like depression, a new study says. Much of what researchers found was already known, but the study paints a comprehensive picture by examining various aspects of children’s physical and mental health at the same time. “The surprising part of the study wasn’t any with any single statistic; it was that there’s 170 indicators, eight data sources, all showing the same thing: a generalized decline in kids’ health,” said Dr. Christopher Forrest, one of...

U.S. children whose parents divorce when they are age 5 or younger have reduced earnings as adults and increased chances by young adulthood of teen pregnancy, incarceration and death, according to a study released in June. After a divorce, a household’s income typically is halved as a family splits into two households, and it struggles to recover that lost income over the ensuing decade. Families after divorce also tend to move to neighborhoods with lower incomes that offer reduced economic opportunities, and children are farther away from their non-custodial parent, according to the working paper by economists at the...

Mariam Dagga, a visual journalist who freelanced for The Associated Press and other news organizations and produced harrowing images of the war in Gaza, was killed on August 25 by an Israeli strike on a hospital. She was 33. Through photographs and video, Dagga captured the lives of ordinary Palestinians facing extraordinary challenges: families displaced from homes, people crowding around aid trucks, mourners attending funerals, and doctors treating wounded or malnourished children. During the war, Dagga regularly based herself at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. She was among 20 people, including five journalists, killed there on August 25 by...

Empathy is usually regarded as a virtue, a key to human decency and kindness. And yet, with increasing momentum, voices on the Christian right are preaching that it has become a vice. For them, empathy is a cudgel for the left: It can manipulate caring people into accepting all manner of sins according to a conservative Christian perspective, including abortion access, LGBTQ+ rights, illegal immigration, and certain views on social and racial justice. “Empathy becomes toxic when it encourages you to affirm sin, validate lies or support destructive policies,” said Allie Beth Stuckey, author of “Toxic Empathy: How Progressives...

A man captured on camera hurling a sandwich at a federal agent in DC has been charged with a misdemeanor offense after prosecutors failed to convince a grand jury to return a more serious felony indictment, according to court papers filed on August 28. The move is a blow to the Trump regime, which had highlighted the felony assault case against Sean Charles Dunn to show it would aggressively prosecute violence against law enforcement — even after Trump pardoned January 6 rioters who brutally attacked officers with poles and other makeshift weapons. The White House had spotlighted Dunn’s case...

Sweat covers Isaac Barnes’s face under his beekeeper’s veil as he hauls boxes of honeycomb from his hives to his truck. It’s a workout in what feels like a sauna as the late-morning June temperatures rise. Though Barnes was hot, his bees were even hotter. Their body temperatures can be up to 27 degrees Fahrenheit (about 15 Celsius) higher than the air around them. As global temperatures rise under climate change, scientists are trying to better understand the effects on managed and wild bees as they pollinate crops, gather nectar, make honey and reproduce. They noticed flying bees gathering...