Anna May Wong to become the first Asian American to be on U.S. currency
Dubbed Hollywood’s first Asian American movie star, Wong championed the need for more representation and less stereotypical roles for Asian Americans on screen.
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.
The State of Mexico legalizes marriage equality
In a 50 to 16 vote, the largest state in Mexico has legalized same-sex marriage, becoming the 29th of 32 Mexican states to do so.
California legalizes composting human bodies
California has just become the fifth state in the US to legalize the composting of human bodies, a planet-friendly alternative to the toxic process of cremation.
World-first stem cell therapy trial treats spina bifida before birth
Spina bifida causes nerve damage that accumulates in the womb, and until now, medicine could only respond after that damage was done. A clinical trial at UC Davis Health is changing that window, applying a stem cell patch directly to a fetus’s spine during pregnancy to support repair before birth. The first baby treated was expected to arrive with leg paralysis — instead, she was kicking and wiggling her toes. If results hold across all 35 enrolled patients, this could establish a genuinely new standard of care for a condition that currently offers families very little hope.
President Biden pardons all prior federal offenses of simple possession of marijuana
More than 6,000 people with prior federal convictions for simple possession of marijuana — and thousands of others convicted under Washington, D.C., law — could benefit.
New Delaware law ends many fines and fees that criminalize poverty
HB 244 bans courts from charging interest or imposing fees for late payments, failing to pay, or paying in installments, among several other changes meant to reduce abusive fines and fees.
New Alzheimer’s drug slows mental decline by 27% in trial
The Alzheimer’s Association called the robust study from American biotech company Biogen “the most encouraging results in clinical trials treating the underlying causes of Alzheimer’s to date.”
Youth crime in the U.S. has plummeted 78% since 1994
Law enforcement agencies made an estimated 424,300 arrests of youth in 2020, a 38% drop from the previous year and half the number from five years earlier.
U.S. Senate ratifies Kigali Amendment, joining more than 130 countries in treaty to eliminate HFCs
HFCs were widely adopted in the 1980s and 1990s to replace CFCs, which damage the Earth’s ozone layer. But then HFCs emerged as some of the most potent greenhouse gases, far more potent than carbon dioxide.
El Salvador sees unprecedented decline in homicides since 2015
El Salvador’s homicide rate in 2021 was 3.1 per day; a precipitous drop from 2015’s homicide rate of 18.2 murders per day. It has continued to drop in 2022.