Page 8 - Consider This News Today

Despite a last minute agreement to push a deadline for a shutdown, Congress and the White House have to agree on how to fund the government. So far, all they've been able to do is kick the can down the road. And conditions for making a political deal are only getting worse. Republicans can only lose two votes. And there's skepticism all around.Finding a way out largely depends on Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana. But Johnson has a fractious caucus, is relat...

Popular culture is filled with stories of the underground railroad - the legendary secret network that helped enslaved people escape from southern slave states to free states in the north. Harriet Tubman is the underground railroad's best known conductor. Tubman, who was a Union spy during the Civil War, escaped slavery in Maryland, but returned again and again, risking her own freedom to help free others, including members of her family. Inevitably there's much we don't know .....

The backlash to the Alabama Supreme Court ruling designating frozen embryos has been intense. Republicans at the state and national level have openly disagreed with the decision. And Democrats have used the ruling to hammer Republicans over reproductive rights. Last month, Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth introduced a bill to protect IVF. It hasn't gotten a lot of attention - until now. Duckworth used IVF to build her own family, and has been warning since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v...

In the last few years, a new trend has emerged on social media: De-influencers.Instead of selling, de-influencers encourage their followers to stop buying things they don't actually need. De-influencers are also using this trend as an opportunity to raise awareness about the negative impact of overconsumption on the environment.From plastic packaging to useless gadgets that end up in landfills, over-consumption doesn't just have a negative effect on our wallets - but also on our planet...

Quote – "The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride." That statement, from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to the U-S Embassy, came two days after Russian missiles began raining down on his country two years ago.After weeks of speculation and warnings Russian President Vladimir Putin had declared war.Fueled by grit, patriotism and billions of dollars from the US, Ukraine has waged a fight no one expected they could. But nearly two years in that could be changing. US aid...

Keyser, West Virginia, was once known for coal. But the jobs have been disappearing since the 1970s. First because of automation, then cheap natural gas. And now, the urgency to address climate change is one more pressure on this energy source that contributes to global warming.Now the town, like so much of the country is attempting to transition to renewable energy. The country's first major climate policy, known as the Inflation Reduction Act, gave that transition a boost. It passed with ...

Brian Mann covers the U-S opioid and fentanyl crisis for NPR. That means he talks to a lot of people struggling with addiction. Again and again, he's heard stories of people who have succumbed to their addiction — last year 112, 000 — more than ever in history. But when Mann traveled to Portugal to report on that country's model for dealing with the opioid crisis, he heard a very different story. Overdose deaths in Portugal are extremely rare.The country has taken a radically dif...

About two years ago, New Jersey's Democratic Governor Phil Murphy said that the state would be partnering with the Danish company Orsted, the largest developer of offshore wind projects in the world. The company had agreed to build Ocean Wind 1, the state's first offshore wind farm, powering half a million homes and creating thousands of jobs in the process. The following year, Orsted inked another deal with the state for Ocean Wind 2, a second offshore wind farm with similar capacit...

One of the biggest problems with reporting sexual abuse while it’s happening is that people often don’t take a minor’s word for what happened. Concurrently, the minor who is being

“Love is in the air; life is on the beaches! The winds dance with songs in the mind. Ah! That is life on Turks and Caicos.” — Debasish Mridha