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 Liberal government has announced more than $3.5 million in funding for two initiatives it says will improve access to abortion services and reproductive health information in Canada.
For the first time in 70 years, Stanford University is opening a new school—The Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, a school dedicated solely to studying the climate crisis.
Under a yearlong, $1 million pilot program, the city will send monthly checks of $1,000 to 85 needy households at risk of losing their homes.
Advanced practice registered nurses, nurse-midwives, and physician assistants will now be permitted to conduct medication and aspiration abortions in Connecticut.
An enzyme created by engineers and scientists at the University of Texas breaks down plastics that typically take centuries to degrade in a matter of days.
Under the new code that will take effect in July 2023, new commercial buildings will be built with high-efficiency electric heat pumps for water and space heating.
By the fall of 2023, all 4-year-old children in Colorado will be able to attend preschool at no cost to their families.
A COVID-19 breath test just cleared a major hurdle: the FDA has authorized the first device that can detect the virus from a single exhale, returning results in about three minutes. Made by InspectIR, the device picks up a signature pattern of five compounds the body releases during infection, and in a study of nearly 2,500 people it correctly flagged 91 percent of positive cases. No swabs, no lab. Beyond this moment, the authorization is a real proof of concept for breath-based diagnostics — a field researchers have long hoped could one day help detect cancers, kidney disease, and other conditions, especially in communities where traditional testing is hardest to reach.
Student loan relief reached a milestone in April 2022, when the U.S. Department of Education wiped out balances for roughly 40,000 public service workers — teachers, nurses, social workers, and public defenders whose forgiveness applications had long been tangled in technicalities. Another 3.6 million borrowers got at least three years of credit toward eventual cancellation, after the department fixed income-driven repayment rules that servicers had applied inconsistently for years. Behind the numbers are people who chose lower-paying careers partly because forgiveness made the math work, and finally saw that promise honored. It’s a reminder that even imperfect systems can be repaired when advocates, researchers, and policymakers push in the same direction — and that economic justice often arrives quietly, one fixed rule at a time.
For two decades, citizens have mobilized against different oil and gas projects in Quebec, including shale gas in the St. Lawrence Valley and oil projects in Gaspésie.
