Gather a group of new parents and the conversation will likely turn to their childbirth stories – ranging from the joyful to the gnarly to the positively traumatic. Birth story podcasts and websites feature a curated range of birth experiences, and you can buy embossed leather “birth story” journals as a baby shower gift. People are ...Read more

It has been seven years since North Carolina made headlines for enacting a “bathroom bill” – legislation intended to prevent transgender people from using restrooms that align with their gender identity.

After boycotts threatened to cost the state more than US$3.7 billion, legislators repealed the law in 2017. Since then, ...Read more

The war in Sudan between two rival generals for control of the country is devastating in so many ways. Hundreds of civilians have been killed, thousands injured and more than 1 million people are now homeless. The fighting is even wreaking havoc on the country’s central bank.

In late April 2023, a video surfaced of a branch of the ...Read more

Arsenic is a naturally occurring element found in the Earth’s crust. Exposure to arsenic, often through contaminated food and water, is associated with various negative health effects, including cancer.

Arsenic exposure is a global public health issue. A 2020 study estimated that up to 200 million people wordwide are exposed to ...Read more

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com.

Is there life in the sea that hasn’t been discovered? – Haven W., age 12, McKinney, Texas

Imagine going to a place on Earth where no one has ever been. There are many ...Read more

TAMPA, Fla. — When a hemp dispensary in this Florida city started to stock edibles with certain mushroom extracts last year, state regulators quickly ordered it to stop selling the items.

The shop had been advertising fruit-flavored gummies and other products containing tiny doses of mood-altering chemicals from the mushroom Amanita muscaria....Read more

More than 600,000 Americans have lost Medicaid coverage since pandemic protections ended on April 1. And a KFF Health News analysis of state data shows the vast majority were removed from state rolls for not completing paperwork.

Under normal circumstances, states review their Medicaid enrollment lists regularly to ensure every recipient ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Influential health care interests are jockeying over a potential infusion of $19.4 billion into Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program, while also angling for a 2024 ballot initiative to permanently lock in that funding, California Healthline has learned.

The Coalition to Protect Access to Care, which includes groups ...Read more

LOS ANGELES -- When he sought to make the leap from prosecutor to judge in 2008, Patrick Connolly branded himself to voters as a hard-charging and hard-partying attorney who had won some of the most complicated murder cases in Long Beach between sleepless trips to Las Vegas.

Months before he was elected to the bench, Connolly sent Frank ...Read more

A man died after making contact with the third rail inside the 68th St.-Hunter College subway stop in Lenox Hill, Manhattan, on Sunday, according to police.

Officers responding to multiple 911 calls found the man traipsing on the tracks around 5 p.m., cops said.

He was then seen making contact with the third rail, but no incoming trains, they ...Read more

After a mass shooting early Sunday morning in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood left seven people shot, including one fatally, neighbors expressed frustration that their calls to break up a large gathering before the shooting went unaddressed.

A group had gathered outside in the 4800 block of West Iowa Street around 1 a.m. when an argument broke ...Read more

People who own and sell ghost guns are committing a crime — but there’s no law against making the deadly weapons that authorities say are a rising threat to New Yorkers.

Anyone with a 3D printing machine capable of churning out magazines, receivers and other firearm parts can whip up an untraceable semiautomatic weapon in their kitchen in ...Read more

US fighter aircraft set off a sonic boom that rattled the Washington area on Sunday as it chased an unresponsive Cessna jet that had flown over the region and then later crashed in Virginia.

The plane, a Cessna 560 Citation V, was unresponsive when hailed by authorities as it flew over Washington and northern Virginia, the North American ...Read more

A highly anticipated defense forum in Singapore kicked off with a friendly handshake between Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin and Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu. It ended Sunday with few other signs of optimism that the world’s biggest economies could avoid an eventual collision.

Austin used his speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue to chide ...Read more

Two teenagers were killed and four others wounded in a shooting at a party in central Missouri early Sunday morning.

Those who suffered fatalities were 16 and 17 years old, police said. They were not identified further. No suspects have been arrested.

A large group of people had gathered for a party at a vacant house in Columbia, according to ...Read more

A candy thief pulled out a gun and opened fire at a downtown Manhattan 7-Eleven early Sunday, police said.

The sweet-toothed shooter walked into the store on Church St. near Park Place, about a block away from City Hall, at about 5 a.m., cops said.

He tried to steal some candy, and when a worker tried to stop him, he pulled out a gun, police ...Read more

While the U.S. ponders whether to reopen its embassy in Libya, Vladimir Putin’s new ambassador is preparing to take up his post in the capital, extending Russian influence across an oil-producing nation on the doorstep of Europe.

Russia’s Wagner Group, a private military company controlled by Putin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin, already has ...Read more

A fire has scorched a nearly 100-year-old church in Watts for the second time in less than two years, prompting an arson investigation, authorities said.

The blaze erupted in the sanctuary of St. John's United Methodist Church around 6:50 p.m. and extended into the balcony, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department.

Officials said it took ...Read more