Category: Conflict

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Retired chemist L. Philip Reiss, 79, with a photo of his grandfather, Winford Lee Lewis, the inventor of the chemical warfare agent lewisite. (Photo by Theo Emery).

The Scientists Who Created America’s War Gases

SONORA, Calif. — In a back room of L. Philip Reiss’ condominium, the retired chemical engineer has covered the walls and filled his drawers with mementos of a long life in science. In one corner, he’s hung keepsakes from years volunteering with a Boy Scout

Military Historian Simon Jones at the Talana Farm Cemetery outside Ieper, Belgium, near the site of the first phosgene attack against the British during World War I.

“History is Repeating Itself:” A Century of Chemical Warfare

IEPER, Belgium — The breeze blew in from the east as Simon Jones crossed a newly mowed field in Flanders. It was a brisk April morning. He followed a green ribbon of grass that stretched across the pasture and ended at a marble archway. On

James Morgan, 55, taken in a hearing room on March 25 ​at ​the ​Florida Correctional Institution​, near the town of Starke. He's been behind bars ​since he was 16, or ​for 38 years. His ​"​scheduled release date​"​ is​ in​ 2094. Photo by Amy Linn.

Dying Inside

Teenage murderer James Morgan didn’t go the electric chair. But is his life worth living? In 1987, when I first interviewed James Morgan, he was on death row in Florida, sentenced to die in the electric chair for murdering a widow in a small town

Drawing of boy

Freedom, Finally, After a Life in Prison

WHEN she was 15 years old, Paula Cooper and three high school classmates in Gary, Ind., decided to cut school and steal some money to play games at a local arcade. They drank some cheap wine, smoked some pot and walked to the nearby home

Rhinos

Will All African Rhinos be Dead in Twenty Years?

The flat bone had a bullet hole through it wide enough to fit the tip of a pinky finger, and was caked in a dried mix of Kruger National Park’s rusty clay earth, and blood. Two cracks had propagated outwards from where the bullet entered.

Three elderly residents of Lemington Home for the Aged in the 1940s.

The Death of a Black Nursing Home

PITTSBURGH, Penn.–Elaine Carrington moved into the Lemington Home for the Aged in Pittsburgh in November 2004. She died three weeks later of a blood clot in her lungs. An investigation by the state found that the staff had failed to give Carrington any of her

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,”

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 life.” I

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 ceremony in

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, and dark

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 in the

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 just as

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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 Staphylococcus aureus

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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 of affordable

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For Financial Literacy, A Surprising Political War

When Kelly Cook and her husband tackled the daunting task of buying their dream home in Lebanon, Ohio, they got help from an unexpected source. Struggling to come up with a down payment, the couple discovered a program intended for moderate income homebuyers caught in