It’s become common to read that microplastics – little bits of plastic, smaller than a pencil eraser – are turning up everywhere and in everything, including the ocean, farmland, food and human bodies. Now a new term is gaining attention: nanoplastics. These particles are even tinier than microplastics – so small that they’re ...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.

How does the brain think? – Tom, age 16, San Diego, California

Have you ever wondered how your brain creates thoughts or why something randomly popped into your head? It ...Read more

The number of individuals in the United States who do not identify as being part of any religion has grown dramatically in recent years, and “the nones” are now larger than any single religious group. According to the General Social Survey, religiously unaffiliated people represented only about 5% of the U.S. population in the 1970s. This...Read more

While campaigning in Iowa last September, former President Donald Trump made a promise to voters if he were elected again: “Following the Eisenhower model, we will carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” he said. Trump, who made a similar pledge during his first presidential campaign, has recently ...Read more

PHILADELPHIA — Quaker community members hung a “peace” sign on the campus of Germantown Friends School in the fall. It was a message everyone seemed to agree on.

But outrage ensued in late February after they added a series of cloth watermelons next to the simple five-letter message.

The watermelon imagery — an unofficial symbol of ...Read more

Even if you have health insurance, you might expect to be charged a copayment for some routine care, like office-based exams and consultations. But you probably don’t expect to receive a bill a few weeks later charging you an extra $100 or more.

That’s the situation an increasing number of state lawmakers are looking to change. In ...Read more

“Congress prohibits the NIH from researching the cause of mass shootings.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in an April 21 post on X

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The National Institutes of Health is the federal government’s main agency for supporting medical research. Is it barred from researching mass shootings? That’s what presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr....Read more

PHILADELPHIA — You have just been released from prison after being incarcerated for several years. How do you start a new life?

Your first impulse might be to try getting a job or finding an apartment. But before you can build any of those foundational pieces, you realize your Social Security card and birth certificate are long gone; those ...Read more

LOS BANOS, Calif. — Robert Zavala was fresh out of the Marines and looking to escape dead-end work at a poultry plant in the early 1990s when his old baseball coach — now the head of a local water district — swooped to the rescue with a job offer.

Zavala was grateful for the job, which eventually paid more than $150,000 a year and ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — At a diner just off the freeway north of Sacramento, a mostly white crowd listened intently as it learned how to “save America” by leaning on the same laws that enshrined the rights of Black voters 60 years ago.

Over mugs of coffee and plates of pot roast smothered in gravy, attendees in MAGA and tea party gear took ...Read more

Israeli officials seized Al Jazeera equipment on Sunday, hours after the nation’s cabinet approved a decision to shutter the Qatar-based TV news network’s operations in the Jewish state - an unprecedented step toward an international media outlet.

Inspectors from the communications ministry, accompanied by police, arrived at Al Jazeera ...Read more

U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is facing calls from Conservative lawmakers to adopt an immigration cap, as he comes under pressure to move his party further to the right after it was routed in last week’s local elections.

While internal critics of Sunak decided against trying to replace him, prominent party members renewed their attacks on ...Read more

Mozambique’s ruling party chose Daniel Chapo as its new leader, making the provincial governor the clear frontrunner to succeed President Filipe Nyusi after Oct. 9 elections.

The party, known by its Portuguese acronym Frelimo, made the decision on Sunday following a three-day meeting of its central committee near Maputo, the capital, Catarina...Read more

Belmont Cragin residents were filing into the cafeteria at Prieto Math and Science Academy last month to weigh in on Mayor Brandon Johnson’s signature plan to overhaul Chicago’s mental health system when they got unexpected evidence that the bold, still largely theoretical plan remains a focus at City Hall.

Into the school walked Johnson, ...Read more

A group of about 60 people organized by the Chicago Jewish Alliance gathered at Fullerton and Seminary avenues Sunday morning in response to an encampment set up Tuesday at DePaul University to protest the war in Gaza.

Members of Chabad Lincoln Park, Stand With Us, Hillel Metro Chicago and the Jewish Institute for Liberal Voices, among other ...Read more

After a tense day of protests, counterprotests and increased university police presence on the University of Chicago’s Main Quadrangle, the sun began to fade Friday evening and the Jewish holy day of Sabbath began.

Within the encampment established by the University of Chicago United for Palestine coalition, about 50 Jewish students and ...Read more

A driver crashed into the White House gates and died late Saturday night, authorities said.

Police did not release any information about the man behind the wheel, but the Secret Service said there was “no threat to the White House.”

President Joe Biden was not home at the time, according to the Secret Service. He was spending the weekend ...Read more