Researchers Just Made a Disturbing Discovery About Your Child’s Schizophrenia Risk
Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. For decades, researchers have observed that people whose mothers had complicated pregnancies have higher rates of schizophrenia, but no one knew why this was. Could traumatic pregnancies somehow compromise the brain development of the fetus, causing schizophrenia? Or was it the reverse: Did something about the genes…
New Study: Hurricane Maria Killed 75 Times More Puerto Ricans Than the Government Has Admitted
Ramon Espinosa/AP Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. A new study published Tuesday estimates that Hurricane Maria killed over 5,000 people after striking Puerto Rico last September. That’s more than 75 times higher than the island’s previous official count, and if widely accepted would cement the storm as one of the most deadly…
This Case Could Be a Game Changer in Cities’ Lawsuits Against Big Oil
In 2015 an investigation by the Los Angeles Times and Columbia Graduate School of Journalism partially closed that gap, showing that oil companies like Exxon had acknowledged the planetary risks of their products as early as the 1980s. Attorneys general started asking questions. The oil companies said they saw malfeasance in all this, and it’s…
The Best Parts About Summer Are Also the Worst for the Planet
Madison McVeigh/CityLab Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. This story was originally published by CityLab and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It’s finally (almost) summer, and cities are coming alive with outdoor festivals, farmers markets-turned-street fairs, movie screenings in the park, and food-truck rallies. Much of that activity runs on mobile…
The Coal Industry is Dying, and It’s Leaving Communities Like This One to Pick Up the Pieces
This story was originally co-published with ProPublica and Bloomberg BusinessWeek. John Arnett chose Adams County, Ohio, as his home long before he was old enough to vote, drink beer or drive a motorcycle along the Ohio River. After his parents split up, Arnett opted at age 10 to spend most of his time with his…
Scott Pruitt Tried to Give Men “Property Rights” Over Fetuses
This story was originally published by The HuffPost and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In 1999, Scott Pruitt, then an Oklahoma state senator, introduced a bill to grant men “property rights” over unborn fetuses, requiring women to obtain the would-be father’s permission before aborting a pregnancy. Pruitt, now the embattled administrator of the Environmental Protection…