Every three days someone is killed for defending nature. In 2025, watchdog group Global Witness documented 124 such deaths worldwide, a toll researchers say is likely only a fraction of the total number because repression and armed conflict make many deaths impossible to verify. The victims included Indigenous people, small-scale farmers and community organizers peacefully protecting…
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Since he returned to office, President Donald Trump’s administration has upended foreign aid. It’s labeled well-established, long-running programs as “not aligned with American interests” and slashed their budgets. Still, the billions of taxpayer dollars Congress has allocated for foreign aid programs must be spent; lawmakers have insisted the government continue to fund humanitarian aid…
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As the diarrhea-causing cyclospora parasite continues to spread through the U.S., now having sickened an estimated 11,500 Americans in at least nine states since May, it is becoming increasingly clear that the situation has been massively worsened by the actions of the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) over the past 18 months. CNN reported last week that cuts to the Centers for…
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Elon Musk has shared that he got “carried away” during his time heading the supposed “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, in the early months of the second Donald Trump term — with the billionaire seeming to express only mild regret for the sweeping, illegal government cuts that are slated to kill millions of people across the world over the coming years. “I think I got a little…
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In an extraordinary public display of administration infighting, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the Senate foreign relations committee on June 2 that he was wresting back control of U.S. contributions to an international vaccine consortium — Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance — from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. and his anti-vaxxer entourage. It was time…
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In 2018, when the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) experienced a severe Ebola outbreak, more than 30 experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), close to 20 disaster-response specialists from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and 120 additional USAID staff were on the ground attempting to manage the outbreak, according to estimates from Friends of…
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