This archive covers progress stories from North and Central America, spanning the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and the nations of Central America. Readers will find reporting on health, environment, community resilience, and policy advances across the region.
Butler has served as a senior strategist in VP Kamala Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign, has worked as the director for public policy and campaigns at Airbnb, served as president of the California chapter of the Service Employees International Union, and served on the University of California Board of Regents.
Wab Kinew has become the first First Nations person elected premier of a Canadian province, leading his New Democratic Party to a legislative majority in Manitoba — a province where roughly 18 percent of residents identify as Indigenous. A former rapper, broadcaster, and university administrator, Kinew spoke directly to Indigenous youth in his victory speech, telling them his own life changed when he stopped making excuses and started looking for reasons in family and community. His government has pledged to reopen three shuttered emergency rooms and invest in social housing. In a country still reckoning with the legacies of residential schools and broken treaties, his win is a quiet but powerful sign of what fuller Indigenous representation in democratic life can look like.
Bioprinted skin combining all six primary skin cell types has, for the first time, been successfully grafted onto wounds in pre-clinical trials — closing them faster and with noticeably less scarring. Researchers at Wake Forest layered keratinocytes, fibroblasts, adipocytes, melanocytes, and two other cell types into a three-layer structure mirroring real skin, then watched it grow blood vessels and integrate naturally with surrounding tissue. A larger graft, roughly two inches square, worked on a pig model — a meaningful step toward the kind of scale human patients actually need. For burn survivors and others who simply don’t have enough healthy skin to donate, a lab-grown alternative made from their own cells could transform one of medicine’s most painful, limited tools into something closer to true regeneration.
A White House official said that the new discharges bring the total approved debt cancellation to $127 billion for nearly 3.6 million borrowers so far during Biden’s time in office.
The panic defense is a legal defense strategy used to justify violent crimes against LGBTQ+ people due to a perpetrator “panicking” over discovering their victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity. The state Senate voted unanimously to ban this harmful legal strategy.
The Ni’isjoohl memorial pole has come home to the Nass Valley after 94 years in Scotland, marking the first time a British museum has returned a totem pole to an Indigenous community. The 11-meter red cedar pole, taken in 1929 while most Nisga’a people were away working, was flown across the Atlantic and welcomed by hundreds, including children who laid cedar branches around it as it rested in the sun. The pole had been commissioned by a grieving mother to honor her son, a warrior named Ts’wawit. Its return offers a hopeful precedent for Indigenous communities worldwide still seeking the return of stolen ancestors and belongings — a quiet but powerful shift in what museums can choose to be.
Gay received her Ph.D. in government from Harvard in 1998 and joined the Harvard faculty in 2006. She previously served as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. She is now the President of perhaps the world’s most prestigious university.
The new law bans the open carrying of firearms and prohibits the sale of more than three handguns within 30 days to any one person, with some exceptions for instructors and others.
California will now require corporations to offer access to repair resources like parts, tools, documentation, and software for three years for products priced between $50 and $99.99 and seven years for those priced at $100 or higher. The act applies to gadgets and appliances made after July 1, 2021.
“For the first time, it is possible for water, produced by sunlight, to be even cheaper than tap water,” said Lenan Zhang, a research scientist from the team from MIT and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. “This opens up the possibility for solar desalination to address real-world problems.”
