Kids born in 2020 worldwide will experience twice the number of wildfires during their lifetimes compared with those born in 1960. In California and other western states, frequent wildfires have become as much a part of summer and fall as popsicles and Halloween candy.

Wildfires produce fine particulate matter, or PM₂.₅, that ...Read more

The growth of “halal mortgages” over the past 20 years has expanded financial access to homeownership for many Muslims. Halal mortgages provide interest-free loans in keeping with Islamic beliefs.

These mortgages are available in over 80 countries that have a significant Muslim population, such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Malaysia, ...Read more

Uncommon Courses is an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching.

“Intoxication Nation: Alcohol in American History”

I wanted to get students excited about studying the past by learning about something that is very much a part of their own lives.

Alcohol – ...Read more

Kamala Harris is at the top of a major party ticket running for president. Some people have celebrated her candidacy, hoping that it will excite voters enough to elect the first woman president.

But the glass ceiling that stymied Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid in 2016 is still sturdy at other levels of political office across ...Read more

Mail-in voting in Pennsylvania will not begin on Sept. 16, 2024, as was previously slated. Due to ongoing court cases, the past is poised to repeat itself in the commonwealth in the upcoming presidential election.

Legal battles over Pennsylvania’s election system drew national attention in 2020 as former President Donald Trump and ...Read more

China has released an American pastor after nearly two decades in prison, presenting an olive branch to the U.S. that had repeatedly called for his release.

U.S. citizen David Lin was freed from a prison in China, according to a State Department spokesman. The 68-year-old born-again Christian had been held in China since 2006 on allegations of ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — A campaign flier arriving in mailboxes around Los Angeles County promotes a ballot measure that would mandate "a new approach to expand programs that are proven to prevent homelessness and increase housing affordability."

The measure, which will appear on the November ballot, would "repeal the existing approach," it says.

What ...Read more

CHICAGO — During a recent public appearance, Cook County Public Defender Sharone Mitchell recalled the early days of working to pass, defend and then implement Illinois’ historic bail reform law amid intense furor.

“When I got a call from my aunt in North Carolina asking me if I was involved in a law that legalized murder, I knew it was ...Read more

A criminal case that opened a window to a plot to help Republicans win important 2020 Florida Senate races by propping up fake progressive Senate candidates with shadowy money is finally headed to trial, with a South Florida political operative fighting the charges.

State prosecutors are expected to claim in court this week that former Miami ...Read more

CHICAGO — During a recent public appearance, Cook County Public Defender Sharone Mitchell recalled the early days of working to pass, defend and then implement Illinois’ historic bail reform law amid intense furor.

“When I got a call from my aunt in North Carolina asking me if I was involved in a law that legalized murder, I knew it was ...Read more

After decades of trying to stop Earth from heating up, scientists are exploring how to reverse climate change and maybe even cool the planet back down.

Could clouds be brightened so they reflect more sunlight back into outer space? If lab-grown seaweed is sunk into the ocean, how much carbon dioxide could it absorb? Would drilling holes into ...Read more

When Jessica Staten’s kidney stones wouldn’t pass, she said, her doctor suggested a procedure to “blow ’em up.” She went to have it done last November at St. Joseph Medical Center in Bellingham, Washington, one of nine hospitals that the Catholic health system PeaceHealth operates in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.

“I was probably...Read more

Eighteen months later, Anna Holland still can’t stomach the smell of tomato soup.

“I can’t have a tin of it anymore,” said the climate activist, who shocked the art world — and much of the rest of the planet — by throwing Heinz Tomato Soup at Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” in the National Gallery in London in October 2022.

Holland ...Read more

A syndrome that paralyzed children in Colorado and across the nation seems to have disappeared almost as mysteriously as it arrived, leaving scientists to figure out what happened and survivors to adapt as they grow up.

Doctors first identified cases of unexplained muscle weakness and limb paralysis in children, which they called acute flaccid ...Read more

Investigators are questioning a Greensboro, North Carolina, man in the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.

This comes nine weeks after Trump was shot in the ear at a rally in Pennsylvania.

Ryan Wesley Routh of Greensboro is in custody after the Secret Service spotted a scope pointed at the former president while he ...Read more

The United States Secret Service was already confronting a period of turmoil after a 20-year-old Pennsylvanian made an attempt on former President Donald Trump’s life this summer. But a second attempt, at Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach on Sunday, deepened questions and concerns over whether the agency is up to the task of defending ...Read more

A gunman's ability to get within shooting distance of former President Trump on Sunday has again raised the specter of violence in the American political landscape, a development that analysts said is all too expected as Trump's followers vowed it would make them even more determined to reelect him.

Just two months after a would-be assassin's ...Read more

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro on Sunday afternoon kicked off Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign's "Fighting for Reproductive Freedom" bus tour inside the Independence Visitor Center in Old City, where he criticized former President Donald Trump's record on abortion and said that the western part of the state has seen an influx of women ...Read more