CHICAGO — As more than 900 wildfires continue to burn across Canada, predicting when air quality conditions will fully return to normal in Illinois and the rest of the Midwest can be tricky.

“Some of these fires in the boreal forest, they don’t end until the rain hits,” said Craig Clements, director of the Wildfire Interdisciplinary ...Read more

Israeli troops have withdrawn from parts of southern Lebanon under a U.S.-mediated ceasefire agreement, which aims to keep Iran-backed Hezbollah away from the Israeli border and end nearly five months of conflict.

The move comes after Lebanese President Joseph Aoun traveled to Washington for a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday...Read more

NEW YORK — The MTA failed to keep tabs on a contract for removing recycling from transit facilities — a move that’s cost the agency an estimated $800,000 over five years, according to an investigation by the transit agency’s inspector general.

Investigators at the MTA Office of the Inspector General surveilled 40 MTA facilities, ...Read more

In the 108-year history of daylight saving time in the United States, the country has three times moved to institute it year-round: during each of the two world wars and in 1973-74.

Now, after a 2022 attempt to reintroduce this policy floundered, the U.S. House of Representatives on July 14, 2026, passed the Sunshine Protection Act, ...Read more

Discharge day in the neonatal intensive care unit, or NICU, should feel like a finish line. After weeks or months of monitors, alarms, oxygen, feeding tubes, blood tests and waiting, a family can finally take their baby home.

As a neonatologist, I know how much work it takes to get that baby there. Their lungs have grown stronger. ...Read more

Why would a young Republican back solar power but reject a carbon tax? Why would two Democrats agree that climate change is real but split over a policy that would charge households more if they exceeded a monthly limit on energy use?

Those patterns may go against the partisan rhetoric of our times, but they reflect the reality that ...Read more

Spain’s 1-0 victory over Argentina in the World Cup final on Sunday wasn’t the most entertaining match but still served as the culmination of a monthlong celebration that spanned the North American continent. From Vancouver to Miami, Los Angeles to Mexico City, the three host nations collaborated to produce an experience that was as ...Read more

ST. LOUIS — Missouri healthcare advocate Leslie Ortbals and her husband want to start a family, but she worries they can’t afford it. The 27-year-old said she takes 10 medications daily to manage multiple chronic illnesses.

Now she worries the cost of those drugs could rise — not because of price increases, but because of a tax system ...Read more

Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker called on members of the state Legislative Ethics Commission to publicly release an inspector general’s investigative report of misconduct involving disgraced former state Rep. Harry Benton for participating in a “clear pattern of conduct” that included sexual harassment.

Pritzker’s call for the report’s ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Opposition is building to a sweeping government-wide crackdown on federal grant awards, with opponents threatening litigation over a proposed rule that would put the grant approval process into the hands of political appointees.

A request for public comment on the rule by the Office of Management and Budget triggered almost half ...Read more

Alice Thornton has spent more than two decades treating people living with HIV in Lexington, Kentucky.

Her team tends to “cringe” anytime they hear about patients having to fill out lots of paperwork, like when applying for Social Security Disability payments, because it can be a difficult, burdensome process.

Thornton tries to support her...Read more

How low is too low when it comes to testosterone levels? When Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced in July 2026 that U.S. service members ages 30 and older will have their testosterone tested every year, neither he nor the Pentagon specified what level of the hormone would be considered “low” enough to require treatment – a telling ...Read more

UC San Diego's medical school illegally used race in choosing which students to admit, discriminating against white and Asian applicants in favor of Black and Latino ones, the U.S. Department of Justice alleged Monday.

The findings follow a roughly four-month investigation by the Justice Department and makes UC San Diego the latest medical ...Read more

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders believes discontent with the political establishment who he says hasn’t delivered for working class Americans will propel progressives into positions of power across the country — including Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan.

Sanders, an icon of the Democratic party’s progressive base, returned to Minneapolis on Monday to...Read more

The number of former servicemembers enrolled in the Department of Veterans Affairs system who have had traumatic brain injuries spiked considerably in the last four years on record, new data from the department shows.

The figures, which were posted on the VA website last week, demonstrate that the number of reported TBI instances in the VA’s ...Read more