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.
Eastern monarch butterflies covered 35% more ground in the mountain forests of central Mexico this past winter than they did the year before, according to a World Wildlife Fund survey.
New York’s Legislature passed the bills last week, pushing the changes through after a pair of mass shootings involving 18-year-old gunmen using semiautomatic rifles.
Environmentalists say the mix of traditional knowledge from Indigenous elders, hands-on community engagement, and Western science offer a model for improved conservation.
Data reported to the FBI each year by thousands of police departments across the country shows the percentage of youths taken into custody who were referred to adult courts dropped from 8% in 2010 to 2% in 2019.
In every case, the rectal cancer disappeared after immunotherapy and the cancer has not returned in any of the patients, who have been cancer-free for up to two years.
Indigenous and environmental groups led a campaign against drilling in the refuge, and 29 banks and 14 insurers now say they won’t fund drilling in the refuge.
British Columbia’s decision to decriminalize personal drug possession is one of the most significant public health pivots in Canadian history — replacing arrest with a referral to care for adults carrying small amounts of certain substances. Fear of police kept people from calling for help during overdoses, pushing drug use away from life-saving services. Evidence from Portugal and other jurisdictions suggests decriminalization paired with strong health supports can reduce overdose deaths — and a major province choosing this path adds real momentum to treating addiction as a health issue, not a crime.
A group of quality-assurance testers in Activision Blizzard’s Raven Software division, which developed the popular Call of Duty Game, voted 19-3 in favor of unionizing.
“Implementation of legalized non-medical cannabis coincided with decreases in alcohol and cigarette use and pain reliever misuse,” the University of Washington researchers reported.
Starbucks says it will pay travel expenses for U.S. employees to access abortion or gender-confirmation procedures if those services aren’t available within 100 miles of a worker’s home.
