After a ProPublica and New York Times investigation into New Jersey’s student loan program, Gov. Chris Christie stayed silent. On Monday, he signed a reform bill ending its most onerous practice.
Georgia’s first openly gay state legislator was elected on a November night in 2016, when 28-year-old Sam Park flipped a Republican-held House seat in Gwinnett County. The son of Korean immigrants, Park campaigned on schools and healthcare rather than identity alone. In a Southern statehouse long without LGBTQ+ representation, his win cracked a door open.
Scotland’s 2016 clean energy pledge set one of the boldest targets any government had named: the equivalent of 100% of the country’s electricity from renewables by 2020. Already at roughly 59% that year, mostly from wind, the country turned a distant-sounding goal into a near-term plan — and shifted what other governments believed was possible.
Success in Sri Lanka raises hopes that at least 30 other nations could follow suit, marking beginning of the end for disease that kills 400,000 every year
Forty-four new employers have signed on to the Equal Pay Pledge, bringing the total number to over 100 businesses who have embraced equal pay policies.
Obama’s 2016 offshore drilling ban reached from Virginia to Maine and across Alaska’s Arctic coast, shielding vast federal waters from new oil and gas leases. He did it by invoking a rarely used provision of a 1953 law, claiming permanence for the first time. The legal durability would be left for the courts to decide.
The initiative is one small part of the country’s Energy Transition for Green Growth Act, as lawmakers aim “to make France ¦ an exemplary nation in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, diversifying its energy model and increasing the deployment of renewable energy sources.”
Partially tested in various places in the 1960s and 1970sincluding areas of the US, Canada, and IndiaUBI gives everyone a guaranteed minimum payment as a way to, in theory, reduce poverty and improve health, eduction, and other benefits.
American income inequality narrowed for the first time since 2007, according to Census Bureau data released in September 2016. Median household income jumped 5.2% in a single year — the largest gain on record — and 3.5 million people rose above the poverty line. One hopeful year, hard-won after four decades of widening gaps.
A glow-in-the-dark bicycle path opened in the rural Polish town of Lidzbark Warminski, emitting deep blue light for up to 10 hours a night without touching the electrical grid. Luminophore particles embedded in the 328-foot surface soak up sunlight by day and release it after dark. A small, quiet experiment in making rural roads safer — and unexpectedly beautiful.
