Five U.S. states are repaving roads with unrecyclable plastic waste
Pilot programs are ongoing in Missouri, Pennsylvania, Virginia, California, and Hawai’i are already seeing promising results.
North & Central America
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.
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs extends protections to LGBTQ+ state employees and contractors
The executive order goes beyond existing laws banning employment discrimination to include factors such as sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, culture, creed, social origin, and political affiliation.
The U.S. FDA will now allow abortion pills to be sold at normal pharmacies
Although patients will still need prescriptions to get the pills, this change will drastically widen their access.
United States Military Academy at West Point to remove Confederate symbols from campus
The moves are part of a Department of Defense directive ordering the academy to address racial injustice and do away with installations that “commemorate or memorialize the Confederacy.”
New York opens its first legal recreational cannabis dispensary
New York’s first legal recreational cannabis dispensary opened with a meaningful twist: the very first retail license went to Housing Works, a nonprofit that serves people with HIV, homeless New Yorkers, and the formerly incarcerated. Revenue from the shop will flow back into those social services, turning a newly legal market into direct support for communities hit hardest by the war on drugs. New York reserved its earliest licenses for nonprofits, people with past marijuana convictions and their families, women- and minority-owned businesses, and veterans, backed by a $200 million equity fund. It’s an ambitious bet that legalization can repair harm rather than just generate profit, and other states are paying close attention.
U.S. Postal Service to only buy EVs by 2026
With $3 billion in funds from the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, USPS plans to spend around $9.6 billion in upgrading its fleet and building charging stations, starting immediately with a purchase of 66,000 EVs.
U.S. to eliminate exorbitant cost of prison phone calls
A new U.S. law that will allow the FCC to regulate prison phone calls needs only President Biden’s signature to put an end to a largely unknown, yet famously predatory, prison practice.
University of Houston researchers create “game-changer” vaccine for deadly street drug
In a study published in Pharmaceutics, scientists tested their vaccine on 60 rats. The immunized animals could produce antibodies that stop the deadly drug’s effects.
3M to end ‘forever chemicals’ output at cost of up to $2.3 bn
3M, one of the world’s largest makers of PFAS, will halt all production of these “forever chemicals” by the end of 2025, walking away from a business that brought in roughly $1.3 billion a year. The company expects to absorb up to $2.3 billion in pre-tax charges to exit — a sign it sees long-term liability as the bigger risk than lost revenue. The move follows mounting pressure from regulators, lawsuits, and a coalition of fund managers overseeing $8 trillion in assets who urged dozens of companies to phase PFAS out. Compounds linked to cancer, thyroid disruption, and developmental harm have turned up in drinking water and food supplies worldwide, and 3M’s deadline signals that the era of treating them as ordinary industrial inputs is drawing to a close.
Claudine Gay to be Harvard’s 1st Black president
Gay will be the only Black president currently in the Ivy League and the second Black woman ever, following Ruth Simmons, who led Brown University from 2001 to 2012.