Articles

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Lone bison grazing

An Epic Experiment: Can America’s Great Plains Bison Recover?

The battered white pickup truck is bouncing across a pasture of sagebrush and alfalfa when Bronc Speak Thunder turns the steering wheel east and points to the far side of a creek bed. Scattered across a grassy slope are what appear to be a field of brown boulders —

Nurse

Americans Are Working So Hard, It’s Actually Killing People

Jessica Wheeler works the night shift as an oncology nurse at Wilkes-Barre General Hospital in northeastern Pennsylvania—but her patients are usually wide awake. “When they have a new cancer diagnosis or they’re going to have a biopsy in the morning, they don’t sleep,”

When you eat a bowl of clam chowder in the U.S., you’re probably padding profits for British investors.

Corporate Fishing

What’s it take to buy a share of the ocean in America? For Lion Capital, the British private equity firm, the price is somewhere south of $980 million. That’s the sum the London-based firm paid three years ago when it bought Bumble Bee

Prison doors

Treating Humans Inhumanely in America’s Justice System

“While waiting for an officer to handcuff and escort me back to the cell that awaited me after showering, I sat on the floor holding a razor used for shaving,” W writes to me. “Today was the day I decided to end my

The Hidden History of Same-Sex Marriage in Asia

The Hidden History of Same-Sex Marriage in Asia

October, 2013   Muern Sarun’s parents had turned down several offers of marriage when they asked a motorbike mechanic named Rous Savy to take their daughter’s hand. Rous had taken a liking to Muern after she parked in front of his house in

Rockhopper penguin by Dominque Filippi, Creative Commons.

Which Species Will Live?

The ashy storm-petrel, a tiny, dark-gray seabird, nests on 11 rocky, isolated islands in the Pacific Ocean off the coasts of California and Mexico. Weighing little more than a hefty greeting card and forced to contend with invasive rats, mice and cats, aggressive seagulls, oil spills and sea-level rise, it faces an outsize fight for survival.

A view of Cape Town. Image by J. Lester Feder/Buzzfeed

South Africa’s Same-Sex Marriages Don’t Always Have A Happy Ending

When the reigning Mr. Gay Namibia married his Botswanan partner in South Africa in April 2013, Zimbabwe’s ZimEye.org declared, “History [made] as Africa witnesses second gay wedding.” The first, said the website, happened a week earlier when two men married in a Zulu

Muhsin Hendricks. Image by Courtesy the office of Muhsin Hendricks

South Africa’s Gay Imam and His Disciples

On a rainy afternoon not long ago, South Africa’s only openly gay imam was wrapping up a sermon in a candlelit room in Cape Town. A devoted congregation of a nearly a dozen lesbian, gay, and transgendered Muslims, adorned in hijabs, embroidered fezzes,

A traditional Ugandan healer holds a referral card, developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, to give to villagers suspected of having plague. The card directs them to a local clinic that uses antibiotics, rather than prayer and herbs, to treat the symptoms of plague.

Centuries after the Black Death, Plague Still Kills

ARUA, Uganda — Isaac Baniyo stumbled through his final exam in English last November as a pounding headache and chest pain made it difficult to focus. The teenager’s parents sent him on foot to a drug shop not far from their grass-roofed hut

The WHO vs the Tea Doctor People drinking

The WHO vs. the Tea Doctor

ENTEBBE, Uganda—It’s a little after 9 a.m. on the Wagagai Flower Farm, and Robert Watsusi pedals a bicycle laden with two 3-gallon jugs of a hot, bitter black tea. As he rounds a corner, workers emerge from football field–size growing houses to imbibe their weekly dose of the elixir they say keeps them free from malaria.

Alex Alí Méndez Díaz, an attorney for three couples from Oaxaca, won a landmark same-sex marriage ruling from Mexico’s Supreme Court in December. Photo by J. Lester Feder

Latin America’s Gay Marriage Revolution

In his second inaugural address, U.S. President Barack Obama pledged to make the United States a beacon for the world by recommitting the country to its ideals of equality. He also made history by saying those ideals demand marriage rights for same-sex couples

3 men in stream in stream - Photo Credit: Cameron Ghalambor

Climate adaptation: Survival of the flexible

Up in the foothills of the Rockies last summer, researchers from Colorado State University in Fort Collins fanned out along the banks of a stream. Some took the water’s temperature and measured its speed and chemistry. Others waded in to catch insects using flat-bottomed nets.

An Ash Meadow Amargosa pupfish.

Should we Dilute Genes to Save a Species?

West of Pahrump, Nevada, in a corner of the Mojave Desert a couple thousand feet above Death Valley, a warm aquifer provides a home for one of the world’s rarest animals. It’s a tiny silvery-blue fish, smaller than your pinkie toe, and in the past 50 years it has survived real-estate speculators,

As China Grows Rich, Rainforests Fall

ZHANGJIAGANG, China – An incredible forest lies on its side in this gritty industrial town in southeastern China. On the southern bank of the Yangtze River nine-foot-diameter kevazingo trees from Gabon rub against Cambodian rosewoods and Indonesian teaks. Nearby, rust-colored bark from Malaysian

China’s Rise Creates Clouds of U.S. Pollution

MOUNT BACHELOR, Oregon – At more than 9,000 feet along the crest of Oregon’s Cascade mountain range, the top of this snow-covered peak normally enjoys some of America’s cleanest air. So when sensitive scientific instruments picked up ozone – the chief component of

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“Don’t Forget Your Court Date”

How text messages and other technology can give legal support to the poor. It has been three years since the Great Recession ended, but the nation’s courthouses are still swamped with eviction cases, foreclosures, and debt collection suits. If overdue bills and late

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Pharming Bad Bacteria

In December 2003, a farm couple in the Netherlands scheduled their six-month-old daughter for surgery to correct a congenital heart defect. But before Eveline van den Heuvel could be admitted to the hospital, a test showed that she was carrying a strain of

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The Man Who Turned Antibiotics Into Animal Feed

The food industry and the medical community have fought bitterly, and for decades, over the widespread practice of adding antibiotics to livestock feed to make animals grow faster. Banning the practice would be an agricultural disaster, food companies predict—or at least the end

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Gay Ugandans Take the Law Into Their Hands

There are things many Ugandans know about Rachael Kungu: that she is a DJ who spins at clubs and house parties, that she is warm and approachable, that crowds adore her, and that, perplexingly, she is a lesbian. Kungu lives in a leafy,